


Can't Part the Sea, Can't Reach the Shore

by forensicleaf



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Actions which could be construed as self-harm, Discussions of mental illness, Gaslighting, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Irondad, More tags to be added, Non-Consensual Restraint, Post-endgame but not endgame compliant, Questioning of Reality, Whump, creative liberties taken with representation of psychiatric care, depictions of mental illness, non-consensual drugging, though not necessarily intended to be, you know what I’m talking about
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-01-23 03:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 64,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21313804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forensicleaf/pseuds/forensicleaf
Summary: "What sounds more likely to you? It's not a trick, I'd genuinely like to know what you think. Is it more likely that you were bitten by a radioactive spider on a field trip, and that by some miracle this didn't kill you, instead gifting you with fantastical abilities, or that you witnessed something deeply tragic and extremely traumatising — traumatising for anybody, but especially so for a child — and your brain formed this fantastical world as a way to cope?"Peter doesn't answer. Around the lump in his throat, he can't. He sets his jaw, but a hot tear rolls down his cheek anyway, followed by another, and another."I'm not crazy," he whispers."Of course not, you're simply unwell."~~When Peter finds himself in an unfamiliar place, with no memory of how he came to be there, they tell him he has relapsed. They tell him Spider-man is just a character he invented to cope with trauma, that everything that has happened to him over the last two years is a figment of his imagination.But Peter knows the truth.Doesn't he?
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 1267
Kudos: 887
Collections: Long Fics to Binge, fics i will read for ever and ever and ever and ever





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it's clear from the tags, but this story deals pretty heavily with doubts about reality and perception, and other mental health afflictions, some of which are not yet tagged to avoid spoilers. Please think carefully on whether this story is for you and take care of yourselves <3
> 
> Special thanks to seekrest for giving this a read over and catching my British-isms.

Disorientation.

That’s the only word that Peter can think of to describe this sensation, and yet it still comes nowhere close to conveying the reality. It’s unlike anything he has ever experienced. Vertigo swills his brain and nausea flips his stomach. For a few, horrible moments, Peter’s not sure which way is up, not even sure he’s still in his body. And then, the moments pass.

He brings a hand up to side of his head, fingers pressing into his temple to alleviate the throbbing there. There’s no one particular sore spot on his skull, no bumps, it’s more of an all-over ache which just makes Peter wonder what the hell happened to him. He takes a deep breath and blows it out hard, trying to expel some of the residual dizziness, blinks open his eyes, and then blinks again, squinting up at a blurry, panelled ceiling.

For a long time, that’s all he does, too disoriented still to manage much else, but eventually he comes back to himself enough to attempt moving. First, it’s his head, rolling stiffly along the pillow, then it’s his arms, also stiff as he pushes himself up onto his elbows, a frown finding its way onto his face as he takes in his surroundings.

Neutrally decorated and sparsely-furnished, the room he’s in is unfamiliar. It looks kind of like a hotel room: Peter sits on a queen bed against one wall, a simple desk and accompanying chair rest against the one opposite. Other than that, the only pieces of furniture are a bedside cabinet, and a built-in shelving unit, everything neat and orderly. Through a partially-open door, Peter can see an en-suite bathroom.

He stares at all of it, deeply confused.

“What the hell?” he murmurs, pulling himself upright. Where is he? He racks his brain, but he has no memory of this room, of how he got here or what he was doing before. And though that doesn’t necessarily mean much — it wouldn’t be the first time Peter has woken up in an unfamiliar place with a black hole in his memory and an ache in his head, usually to someone telling him he’s concussed (and the persistent blurriness in Peter’s vision right now despite him rubbing over and over at his eyes tells him that that’s the most likely case here, too) — it _is_ unsettling.

The lack of a pissed and worried May hovering nearby — or a pissed and worried Tony, for that matter — is more unsettling, still. 

“FRIDAY?” Peter says, hesitant. He’s hoping this is just a part of the new compound he hasn’t visited yet; renovations have been ongoing for a while, and what with that and the majority of the team moving back in in the wake of everything that’s happened, things there tend to lean toward the chaotic, rooms changing purpose and function all the time. But as the seconds drag on with no response from the A.I., that hopeful theory grows less likely.

Peter swallows, throat feeling dry.

“FRIDAY?”

Once again, his only answer is silence.

There is no panic — not yet; not really — instead, it’s more of an uneasy, creeping sensation down his spine. Peter glances around his lodgings again, this time with a new kind of alertness, a sharper edge. Nothing about this situation is exactly screaming sinister, hence the lack of worry up to this point —Peter isn’t restrained, or drugged, or in a freaking…_dungeon_ or anything. Hell, the sun is streaming in through the window, bright and cheery and golden. But Peter has been through too much weirdness in his life to assume the best case scenario here, and now that wariness has taken hold, it is impossible to push to the side.

Slowly, he climbs to his feet, noting as the carpet depresses beneath his toes that they are bare. There are no shoes anywhere, and the clothes he’s in are not his own: a pair of grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt, as plain as the room around him. For some reason, it’s these two facts which make his hair stand on end.

With the sudden and overwhelming urge to _get out, _Peter turns, heading swiftly for the main door. He hadn’t seen before, but as he approaches he notices the small circular pane of glass set within it, about head height, and feels his unease begin to curl into dread. Dread that only worsens when he twists the handle and finds that the door is locked.

_Okay_, Peter thinks, trying to control his breathing, _no big_. It’s been a hot minute since a locked door has meant anything to him, anyway.

Except when he pulls harder, nothing happens.

He pulls again, harder still, and then as hard as he can, but the door doesn’t budge. He tries pushing, too.

Nothing.

He peers through the glass, twisting his neck left and right and craning to see down the hallway on the other side. If there were any doubts in his mind as to whether he was somewhere familiar, they are chased away by the sight of the clinical, white corridor on the other side of the door.

“Hello?” he says, hesitant.

Silence.

“Hello?” he calls again, louder this time.

Somewhere, on the other side of the door, someone screams.

It’s loud and piercing and horrifying, and Peter jumps back, wide eyes fixed on the glass circle as his heart gallops in his chest. The screaming stops as abruptly as it started, but the sound lingers in Peter’s ears, ringing and reverberating round his skull. For a moment, he is frozen, and then he is spinning, scrambling across the room towards the window and feeling his panic kick up a notch as he approaches the only alternative exit, seeing it clearly for the first time. The window is about chest height, and while it is flush against the wall on this side, on the other it is set back slightly in a shallow alcove. Beyond the glass is a half-foot of concrete, and cemented into it, to Peter’s mounting horror, is a metal grate — ornate, yes, but a metal grate all the same.

There are bars on the window.

Sheer denial and desperation have his hands fumbling with the latch anyway, pushing the window open and jarring his wrists when the hinge catches after only a few inches.

“Come on,” he hisses, shoving. The frame creaks in protest, but holds firm, the gap he’s created barely big enough to fit his arm through. He throws a glance over his shoulder, fearful and almost-certain that there will be a face at the glass in the door when he does, but there is no one — the hallway is still silent.

He pushes the window again, arms shaking, but just like the door, no amount of shoving or straining has any effect. Peter steps back, breathing hard, skin tingling all over. He looks down at his hands with a growing and terrifying certainty:

Something is wrong with him.

He takes a second, just a second, to allow the panic that that realisation brings to overwhelm him, to let all of the possible _hows_ and _whys_ — each more terrifying than the last — flit through his mind. And then he takes a deep breath and gets to work, pulling out desk drawers and stripping the sheets, lifting the mattress and searching every inch of the room for something he might either be able to use to get himself out of here, or as a weapon if it comes to that.

But as he ransacks the place with fervour, his determination wains. He finds clothes (more of the same grey sweatpants and white t-shirts), a worn copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and a pair of glasses, but nothing that could even constitute useful. Everything heavy or sharp-edged (of which there is shockingly little) is bolted to the floor or the wall. Most things are made of plastic. The shower head is attached directly to the wall; the toilet cistern is enclosed; there is no mirror to smash for glass, nor even a bar of soap to throw at someone’s head. It’s almost like the entire place was designed in direct conflict with Peter’s intentions.

He stands in the middle of the room, bedsheets and toilet paper and clothes littering the floor around him, and feels that panic begin to rise again. He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know why he’s here, and most important of all, he doesn’t know how he’s going to get out.

He doesn’t have long to contemplate it, though; the sudden jingling of keys in the lock has him startling so hard his flinch is a full body recoil. He stumbles away from the door, feeling his heart leap into his throat. As the handle twists, Peter grabs the only thing in the room that isn’t bolted down. Holds the desk chair out in front of himself like a shield.

The door swings open.

“Good morning, Peter. How did you—”

It’s a woman — short, pretty, dressed in a pale green uniform. She freezes at the sight of the trashed room, at the sight of Peter, tense and brandishing the chair in front of him. A man — tall, not-so-pretty, and dressed in the same green uniform — steps into view behind her, frowning as he takes in the scene. He meets Peter’s eye, and Peter’s grip on the chair tightens.

“Where am I?” Peter demands, eyes flicking between the two strangers, trying to sound firm, though he hears the way his voice shakes. “What did you do to me?”

The guy makes to step forward, but the woman holds up a hand.

“Call Doctor Lake, please,” she says quietly over her shoulder to him. Then she turns to Peter, smiles gently. “Peter, sweetheart, how about we put the chair down?”

Peter can’t help it. He laughs — short, humourless and with a creeping edge of hysteria. “No. I think— I think I’m going to keep it.”

“Okay,” the woman says after a moment, face open, understanding. She raises her hands, palms forward. “That’s okay. You can hold onto it for the moment, if it makes you feel safer.”

It’s not the response Peter was expecting. If anything, it makes him more afraid. More uncertain. His palms feel sweaty, clamped around the chair.

“What’s going on?” he asks, voice barely louder than a whisper.

The woman gives him a sympathetic look. Her mouth twists up into a half-smile, almost sad. "You already know the answer to that, Peter. Just try for me, okay?"

He stares at her, face as blank as his memory. There’s nothing there, no recollection of this woman, this place, nothing, though an unpleasant theory is beginning to form in his mind.

He shakes his head.

"Okay,” the woman says slowly. “You're in Newhaven, remember? You're here because you need a little help, that’s all. I promise you no one is trying to hurt you."

"Newhaven," Peter repeats. The name sparks no recognition.

"That's right."

Peter swallows. “What is…Newhaven?”

He knows what it sounds like, and he’s desperately hoping that he’s wrong. He searches the woman’s face for reassurance, but at his question, her expression flickers slightly. It’s so quick that if Peter hadn’t been scrutinizing her every reaction, he doesn’t think he would have noticed, but notice he does.

“I think it’s best we wait for Doctor Lake,” she sidesteps neatly, expression a perfect, practiced neutral.

“I don’t need a doctor,” Peter says, hearing the shrillness creeping into his voice. “I don’t need _help. _What is this, really? Who are you?”

“Peter, please. It’s okay. You’re okay. Like I said, you’re safe here.”

He doesn’t feel safe. He feels boxed in, cornered and confused. His eyes dart, looking for an explanation, looking for an exit. Behind the woman, the man is in the hallway on the phone. He’s talking in hushed tones, but Peter hears snatches.

_The Parker kid. _

_Relapse._

And then a word that sends a burst of fearful adrenaline flooding Peter’s veins — _sedate_. 

His hands shake around the chair in his grip. He turns his gaze back to the woman, who is still smiling, soft and warm and gentle, and he feels an inexplicable sting of betrayal.

She tilts her head slightly, hand outstretched and eyes soft, like Peter’s a wild animal that she’s trying to calm, and in that moment the comparison probably isn’t too far off. Peter feels like a rabbit in the sights of a fox, eyes wide and breathing strained and heart thumping so hard against his ribs that he’s sure it’s making his shirt twitch. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” the woman says, encouraging.

For a moment Peter simply stares, breathing shallow, then slowly, he lowers the chair to the ground, uncurling his stiff fingers from their grip around the frame. As he does, the woman’s face relaxes, but Peter notices this only on the periphery: his attention is focused behind her. The guy, still on the phone, has moved slightly down the hall. He’s got his back to the door.

Peter sees his opportunity, and he takes it.

The woman realises his intentions a fraction of a second too slow. As he bolts forward she tries to stop him, but even without his abilities, Peter is wriggly — always has been. He yanks against the hand she clasps around his arm, twisting and pushing past her and feeling only a slight twinge of guilt as she falls against the doorframe with a grunt of pain.

Hearing the noise, the orderly spins round, dropping the phone from his ear with a panicked, “_Shit_”, but it’s too late; as he jumps to action, Peter is already running for his life, the slapping of his bare feet against the cold tile floor as loud as the heartbeat thundering in his ears. 

He sprints, not knowing where he’s going. Everything around him is white: white walls, white doors, white ceiling, white floor. He swings around a corner, feet sliding, stumbles and almost loses his balance, but he catches himself, driven forward by the sound of fast-moving feet and yells from behind him.

“Stop,” someone calls.

Peter doesn’t. As if there’s even a _chance_. No way in hell is he sticking around to find out what’s going on here. White walls and people in scrubs and a disturbing lack of the abilities he’s cherished for the last two years — he already knows it’s bad. Already knows that he’s got to get out.

He squints into the distance. Blurry shapes up ahead form into an elevator and signs for a stairwell as he draws closer, and Peter dashes for them, trying to ignore both the steadily tightening pinch in his chest and the sounds of more feet joining in the chase behind him. He needs to keep a level head, think clearly, find a way out.

But even driven forward by determination and desperation, Peter feels his pace begin to slow. The pinching in his chest grows worse, becoming impossible to push aside. It slows his feet and accelerates his pulse as he tries to expand his lungs against it. Every intake of air feels thin, every breath a little harder to take, and as he gasps, he realises: this isn’t just panic; it almost feels like…

Like…

Like _Asthma_.

But that’s impossible. Peter hasn’t needed his inhaler since that fateful trip to Oscorp. He doesn’t even remember the last time he was genuinely short for breath, let alone in need of several puffs of albuterol. Yet as impossible as the situation may be, the symptoms are familiar and unmistakeable.

Peter wheezes, pressing his knuckles against his sternum as he staggers forward. The door is so close. He’s just got to get to it, that’s all. He’s just got to keep going. He’s just got to— he’s just got to—

He chokes on an inhale as large arms encircle his upper body, pining his own arms to his sides and pulling him back tight against a broad, unyielding chest.

“Get off!” he gasps, voice hoarse, thrashing, kicking his legs, trying to remember the techniques Natasha taught him, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to remember anything at all. He stamps as hard as he can on his captor’s instep, but the guy barely flinches, hissing out only a clipped, “Ow.”

“Let” — a horrible gasp — “Let go of me! Let me—”

“Peter!” It’s the woman from before. She has moved so she is standing in front of him, palms raised in a placating manner, brows drawn together in a facsimile of concern. “Peter, please, you need to calm down.”

But he can’t. The full gravity of the situation he’s in is finally starting to dawn on him, and with it comes true fear, electric and impossible to subdue. He’s in this unfamiliar place — no, _trapped_ in this unfamiliar place — with none of his powers and no clue as to how he came to be here. Panic sits high in his throat. His heart beats hummingbird quick against his ribs. His lungs strain. He struggles, even though he knows he’s wearing himself out, even though the futility of it is becoming increasingly evident.

In his desperation he throws his head back, vision whiting out as his skull makes contact with something hard. There's a crunch and a yell, and the arms around him loosen just a fraction — just enough for him to wiggle free — but now on top of shaking so hard he can barely stand, let alone run, Peter is also dizzy. He barely gets a few feet before a hand catches his arm. 

The tips of his fingers brush the wall as another pair of hands pull him backwards, and he focuses his entire being on making himself stick, feeling the disappointment and helplessness like a knife under his ribs as he is effortlessly pulled away from the wall and once again drawn back into a tight hold, large arms tightening around his chest.

“No!” he pleads.

More hands grab at his wrists, stopping his flailing fists with far more ease than should be possible. There are too many hands on him. Too many people shouting. Peter can’t breathe. He struggles.

“Stop it, man,” says the guy holding Peter’s wrists. He is unfamiliar, but the smattering of blood between his nose and upper lip is telling. “We’re trying to help you!”

Peter doesn’t believe that for a second. He twists, manages to get an elbow in the gut of the guy behind him, but the hold he’s in means there’s little force behind it. He swings out a leg instead, catching someone’s shin.

“Did one of you call Croft?” the guy at Peter’s back asks, voice strained with exertion.

“No,” drawls another. “I thought it’d be fun to try and deal with this solo.”

“_Davis_.”

“_Yes_, I called him. He should be—”

“I’m here! I’m here!”

The sound of shoes squeaking quickly against linoleum meets Peter’s ears, and then, in his field of vision, a flustered man with a receding hairline appears, breathing harshly and dressed in a white coat.

“Sorry,” the guy — _Croft_ — says, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his coat. “Lake took the keys home with him last night so I had to—“

“All good, Doc. Little help, though?”

“Right. Sorry. Right.”

The new arrival shakes his head, snapping to attention and reaching into his pocket. As he withdraws his hand, the object he is holding catches the light, metal glinting under the fluorescents. At the sight, Peter stills, eyes going wide.

And then he is redoubling his efforts, squirming frantically.

“Wait!” he yells. “Wait! Please!”

He bucks and writhes and screams, but it makes no difference. The needle slides in — a sharp sting in his upper arm followed by a cold, numbing flood under his skin, and then—

“There you go,” the guy holding him says, patting his broad hand against Peter’s chest as Peter starts to sag, struggles slowing. “You’re all right, buddy.”

No, he isn’t. None of this is all right. Peter tries to say so, but all that comes out is a groan. And though he fights against it with everything he has left, it’s only a matter of moments before he goes completely limp in the guy’s arms, all the strength draining out of him quicker than he can fully realise it’s happened. He kicks weakly, feeling like he’s been submerged underwater.

“Nuh…no,” he mumbles, trying not to lean his weight into the arms supporting him and doing it anyway. His head lolls. His body is not his own. He no longer has any control. Even the terror chasing through his veins slows, growing muted as the drugs drag him under.

“Poor thing,” he distantly hears the woman say.

“_Poor thing_? Jesus, I think he broke my nose.”

“Nah, he just fixed it for you,” rumbles the chest at Peter’s back.

“Where’s he going?” Someone asks as his eyes droop. The voice sounds garbled. Warped. “Back to his room?”

“17-A, yeah.”

“I’ve been here a year, Martinez. I know the room.”

“C’mon on, then. Kid looks like he’s about to tap out.”

Peter feels his weight being carefully adjusted and he can’t do anything to stop it, can’t do anything at all. An involuntary whimper rises in his throat. He doesn’t want to go back. He doesn’t want to go wherever they’re taking him. He wants to go home.

“No,” he mumbles once more.

Or does he?

His lips feel numb.

Everything feels numb.

And then nothing feels like anything at all.

* * *

Peter blinks.

White.

It’s…

…white.

It’s…

…moving.

It’s…

…making him feel sick.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, blocking out the warping image above him, but even the darkness behind his lids seems to swirl, and with it so does his stomach.

He groans.

He feels weird. Floaty and heavy and aware and disconnected. Thoughts barrel through his mind and then disappear without even a thread left behind to grasp at. Someone is speaking, and close, but it takes a moment for Peter’s brain to translate the rhythm and sound into words.

“Mr Parker?” the voice asks again.

“Mmm.”

Peter’s eyes twitch. They were open before, but now it feels like his lids are being held down by weights, impossibly heavy.

“Peter?”

With great effort, Peter forces his eyes open, turning his bleary gaze in the direction the voice had come from. Everything is all blobs of colour and undefined shapes, but as his focus halfway sharpens, those colours and shapes take form, revealing that he is in a sparse and neutrally-decorated room. And that he is not alone.

Sitting in a chair to Peter’s right is a man dressed in a dark sweater and slacks and observing Peter with a patient, not-unkind expression. As Peter meets his eyes, he leans forward, steepling his hands under his chin and resting his elbows on his knees.

_I know you, _Peter thinks, feeling his brain twinge as he tries to place the face. He pushes at the edges of his memory, but only succeeds in drawing forward the beginnings of a headache.

The man smiles.

“Good to see you awake.”

Peter blinks in response, trying to keep his gaze from sliding.

_Who are you?_ he wants to ask, but his jaw moves like he’s been chewing glue, and he succeeds only in clicking his tongue uselessly against the roof of his mouth.

“I understand you’re a little confused right now,” the man says. “Doctor Croft and the team inform me that you made a mess of your room earlier. Tried to leave. Do you remember that, Peter?”

Peter frowns, thinking. Snippets drift through his head; white walls and green scrubs. Running fast and bloody noses. A syringe glittering in the light. _Fear_. He cringes away from the memories, away from the man sitting beside him who watches him, expression remaining calm and unchanged, as Peter sluggishly tries to draw in his limbs. Remaining calm and unchanged as Peter realises that he _can’t_.

Distress rising, Peter rolls his head on the pillow, looking down the length of his body to see the reason why: soft leather restraints encircle his wrists and ankles, securing him firmly to the frame of the bed.

Peter knows he should be scared — and he is — but it’s buried so far beneath the surface, held back by the cocktail of drugs running through his system, that it’s almost like he’s an observer to his own terror. He pulls weakly at the cuffs. His vision blurs further, and it takes far too long for him to realise it’s because he is crying.

“They’re temporary, Peter,” the man says. “Please don’t worry. Right now, we’re just talking, and then they can come off, okay?”

Peter sniffles. He’s confused, and scared, and too out of it to properly process either emotion.

He works his jaw.

“Wh…y?” he manages eventually, tongue thick and heavy in his mouth.

“Why the restraints?”

Peter’s crinkles his brow. _No_. _Why am I here? Why are you doing this? (Why aren’t my powers working?) _

His tongue won’t work.

“Peter, you injured three orderlies this morning — people who were only doing their job, trying to help you. You were incredibly distressed and unwilling to listen to reason. These were deemed necessary for your safety as much as anybody else’s. Do you understand?”

The words, Peter does, but the situation? He is more confused than ever. Still, even in his diminished state, he is aware enough to recognise that agreement is the quickest path out of his bonds. More tears prick at his eyes, but he nods.

“Okay,” the man says. “Good. Now, I think I already know the answer, but I’d like to hear it from you: do you remember who I am?”

Peter turns his head. Once more, he tries to place the face, and once more, all trying does is send an ache through his skull. He shakes his head.

“Right,” the guy says, scratching at his neatly-trimmed beard. “Well, we’ve met before, of course, but given the circumstances I’m happy to introduce myself again. My name is Doctor Lake. I’m the head doctor here at Newhaven. _Your_ doctor, actually, Peter, although I don’t expect you to recall that right now.”

He allows a moment for Peter to process this, but Peter cannot even begin to do so_. _The sheer absurdity of what the doctor is implying brings Peter’s already slow-moving brain to a screeching halt. When he simply stares at the man, Lake continues.

“And, as your doctor, first and foremost I’d like to apologise to you: It was my decision to adjust your treatment, and given what transpired this morning, where we are right now, I can see that it was a mistake. I take full responsibility for that — you obviously weren’t ready, and that is something I should have realised before it got to this point.”

Again, for a moment, all Peter can do is stare. And then he finds his voice.

“No,” he says.” N…no. No. ‘S not—”

“Peter.”

“No. N—”

“Peter,” Doctor Lake says again, voice firm for the first time since he started speaking. Peter tapers off. The doctor sighs. “I understand this is a lot to take in, and I don’t want to overwhelm you right now, so all it’s important for you to know for the moment is that I’m here to help you. As is everybody in this facility.”

There’s that word again — help_. We’re here to help you, Peter. You just need a little help. They were just trying to help you. _He doesn’t want _help._ He squeezes his eyes shut, turns his face away from the man sitting beside him, like if maybe he doesn’t have to look at him, this insane nightmare will go away. Like maybe he’ll wake up at home, or in the med wing with a goose egg on the back of his head and May berating him for knocking a few more precious brain cells out of his skull.

“Okay,” says the doctor after a moment, “I can see that this is upsetting you, so I think it’s best we leave it there for today.”

There’s a pause — perhaps Lake is waiting for Peter to acknowledge him — and then Peter hears the man get up from his chair. At the sound of his retreating footsteps, Peter’s eyes peel open. His head twists to follow the noise, panic swelling.

He’s not just going to _leave_ him like this, is he? Chained to the bed like an animal? He _promised_.

But no, the man is just signalling someone to enter the room_. Two_ someones — the woman and one of the men from before. Dulled relief swirls with guilt, and then trepidation as they move closer and Peter sees the bruised nose on the guy, the dark smudges under his eyes. The hardness of his face.

_I did that._

Peter swallows.

“’m… ‘m sorry I… hurt you,” he slurs out, guilt and the fear of retribution driving his tongue. But to his surprise, the guy huffs a short laugh. Gestures to his face.

“Yeah, well. Not like you could have made this any worse,” he says gruffly, but he doesn’t really sound all that annoyed.

“They’re going to take the restraints off now, Peter,” the doctor says. “I trust you’ll remain calm? No repeats of earlier?”

As if Peter even could right now. He doubts he could lift his arms more than an inch even if they weren’t secured. Too tired to feel humiliated by the question, too desperate to no longer be tied down, he nods.

He feels himself tense as the orderlies move forward, but all they do is exactly what was promised: Peter’s limbs are freed — wrists first, and then ankles. He clumsily pulls his arms into his chest, feeling like they’re made of lead, felling as weak and uncoordinated as a new-born calf. Feeling vulnerable.

This isn’t the relief Peter thought it would be — being unable to move due to a lack of cooperation from his own body is almost worse than being unable to move due to forcible restraint — and perhaps that is the reason why as soon as the cuffs are off, the dam breaks. Tears flood Peter’s eyes and roll silently into his hairline, the stress of it all finally pushing through the drugged haze.

“Oh no, sweetheart,” says the woman, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing back and forth, soothing. It makes Peter think of May, and the tears spring thick and fast. He wants to hide his face, curl away, but all he does is lie there, exhaustion and the desperate need for comfort eclipsing any shame. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

The hand doesn’t move away, and neither does the woman. She stays until Peter’s tears dry out, until the last of his energy is depleted and his eyes start to droop despite himself.

“Sleep, honey. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

Peter tries to fight it, but the pull of sleep is too strong. His eyes roll as he tries to bring them to focus, and fails.

The last thing he sees before he slips under is the woman’s face, fixed in a smile. Not her actual one, though, he distantly realises as he registers the laminated sheen, but a photo. Her employee I.D badge, clipped to the front of her shirt.

Below the smiling face are five letters, stamped in large block capitals that even Peter with his blurry and unfocused gaze can read clearly.

Five letters.

Her name.

KAREN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think. I live and breathe for your comments :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest) for looking over this and being an awesome cheerleader!

The following morning brings with it a refreshed sense of clarity, and a repeat visit from Doctor Lake.

Peter’s thoughts are still somewhat clouded, his body still weak, but this time when the door opens, he is ready for it. He clambers to his feet at the sound of the lock disengaging, swaying slightly at the change in altitude but forcing himself to stand tall. He wants to show these guys that he isn’t scared, even though his heart is beating just as hard as it was yesterday. Perhaps harder.

Doctor Lake doesn’t look surprised to see Peter up, just smiles as he steps into the room and pushes the door closed again behind him, signalling to the orderly outside to lock them in.

To Peter, the heavy clunk of the bolt sliding back into place sounds like a gavel.

“Good morning, Peter,” the doctor says, perfectly pleasant.

Peter gives no greeting in return, just backs up as Lake approaches, eyeing the man warily. Like the day before, he is struck by that niggling sense of familiarity. There is something about the doctor’s face that makes Peter certain they’ve met before now, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t make the spark of recognition evolve into anything concrete. The features before him remain just that: features. It’s frustrating, and Peter frowns.

Lake doesn’t seem perturbed in the slightest by Peter’s response, though, or lack thereof. He grasps the back of the desk chair with one hand, the other clamped around a thermos, spins it round and takes a seat. He leans back, resting one ankle over the other knee and looking far too relaxed to put Peter at ease. Too relaxed to really peak his worry, either.

“Take a seat, won’t you?” the doctor says, gesturing to the bed. He takes a sip from his flask. “Please.”

_Is he kidding?_

An indignant sort of anger bursts hot in Peter’s chest at how casually the man is behaving right now, considering what he put him through yesterday — what he’s still putting him through — but he resists the knee-jerk reaction to tell him to go to hell: even standing for this short while is draining Peter’s energy quicker than he’s comfortable with, and so, after a moment’s hesitation — and keeping the doctor squarely in front of him — he inches along the bed, lowering himself to perch stiffly on the edge of the mattress.

He takes a steadying breath.

“Look, there’s—” The aftermath of all the drugs and the screaming and the fear have left his throat scratchy. Dry. His tongue feels like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth. “There’s been a mistake. I’m not — I shouldn’t be here.”

He had planned on being diplomatic — firm, even — but hours and hours of staring at the same four walls with nothing but his own scattered thoughts and dulled senses for company lace his words with desperation. He hates the pleading edge that creeps into his voice, and yet still some small part of him hopes that it might have some effect.

If Lake hears it though, he doesn’t give any outward indication. For a moment, he holds Peter’s gaze, and then, in that same pleasant tone as before, says, “Peter Benjamin Parker. Born August 27th, 2002 in Flushing, New York. Parents Richard and Mary Parker, guardian one May Parker. That is you, is it not?”

The dryness in Peter’s throat increases tenfold. He swallows.

“There’s no mistake,” the doctor continues, cheery. “I’m sure it must feel that way to you right now, but I assure you, we are both exactly where we’re meant to be. Now, first things first: how are you feeling this morning? I know sedatives can really take it out of you. They wouldn’t have been my first choice — it’s not how I like to do things — but I can’t fault Croft for doing what he thought was best at the time.”

Peter stares. Feels his gaze lower into a glare. It hadn’t felt too ‘best at the time’ for him — less so, still, an indeterminate amount of time afterwards, when the afternoon had begun to slip into evening and the drugs had begun to slip out of his system, leaving behind a dizzying pounding in his skull and a nausea that had him heaving and retching into the toilet through to the early hours of the morning, a nausea which is only just abating now. He has vague impressions of a hand rubbing small circles into his back, a damp washcloth across his face, but if either really happened, Peter can’t be sure, and he doesn’t want to think about it — even the hazy memory of feeling that helpless, that confused is enough twist his gut and tighten his grip on the starched sheets beneath his hands. If he’s completely honest with himself, he isn’t feeling much better on those two fronts right now, either, though thankfully he _is _thinking more clearly. Which is why now, he says nothing.

“Okay, well. You’re up and about, which is great,” Lake goes on when it becomes clear that Peter isn’t going to respond. “I take it there’s no change from last night in terms of what you remember?”

Peter’s continued silence must be answer enough for the doctor, who sighs.

“Hmm. Then I’m afraid this is going to be a slightly less pleasant chat than those we’ve grown accustomed to. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, Peter. I’ll do my best to answer them as openly and honestly as possible. Whenever you’re ready.”

It’s a trick, Peter thinks, searching the doctor’s face with narrowed eyes, there’s no way this guy is going to tell him the truth. Peter knows he should just stay silent, collect information about his current predicament on his own, but in the end, as always, his curiosity outweighs his caution.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in Newhaven Psychiatric Center.”

Peter had figured that was the answer he was going to get. It’s the same answer the woman — The Woman, because he hasn’t been able to bring himself to think of her as Karen — gave him yesterday. Still, it’s not really what he was asking.

“And where is Newhaven?”

_How far am I from home? When I get out, how far do I need to run?_

Lake huffs a laugh. “New York, of course. If you look out of your window, you can see the Hudson in the distance, though probably not while you aren’t wearing your glasses.”

Peter glances down at the pair, thick-framed and thick-lensed and still sitting on the bedside cabinet where he had found them yesterday. Years of pushing heavy frames back up the bridge of his nose when they would slide down flash through his mind, of cold glass fogged by warm breaths in bitter East Coast winters and countless lenses scuffed to ruin by being wiped on the sleeve of a scratchy sweater.

He looks back to the doctor.

“I don’t need glasses,” he says. “Why am I here?”

“You’re here for treatment, the same as everybody else.”

At the doctor’s clear non-answer, Peter exhales hard. The persistent vagueness is beginning to annoy him.

“_Why? _”

The doctor observes him for a moment, seemingly contemplating what to say, and then he uncrosses his legs, sits up straight. Clears his throat.

“I said I would be honest,” he says, “so I will be. Peter… you came to us following a severe psychotic episode. Do you understand what that means?”

Not fully, no, but Peter understands it enough that his pulse jumps at the word _psychotic_. He thinks of the movies he and Ned would watch when May was working the late shift (_only_ when she was working the late shift, because she would never have allowed the horror fests if she were home). He thinks of axes and rolling eyes and people running and screaming and covered in blood. But… that can’t be what this guy means. That’s not _Peter_. The very suggestion is ludicrous. Even if he were to entertain for a second what the doctor is saying, that’s not _him_. No way.

“No,” he breathes, unsure of whether it’s a denial of the doctor’s claim or an answer to the question.

Lake takes it as the latter.

“Some of my peers don’t believe in discussing these matters with patients in such frank terms, but I’m of the opinion that mental disorders are nothing to be scared of — simply something to treat, as one would a broken arm, or the flu.” He pauses. “A psychotic episode occurs when a person loses the ability to decipher what is real from what is not. Sometimes this involves hallucinations — visual or auditory; sometimes it’s delusions that make it almost, if not completely impossible to function normally in society. In your particular case, you were suffering with both. You came to us two years ago in the midst of severe break. You were seeing things that weren’t there, hearing things that you couldn’t possibly have heard. You were experiencing delusions that led you to violent outbursts, destructive actions. Peter, you were very sick.”

Here, the doctor pauses. Peter stares, barely daring to breathe while the man takes another swig from his thermos.

_Patient?_

_Two years? _

_Violent?_

“I don’t believe you.”

Despite the flintiness in Peter’s tone, the doctor’s remains gentle. “It’s the truth, Peter. Up until what happened yesterday, you knew that, too.”

“I wasn’t _here_ before yesterday,” Peter says. “I was—“ _Home, _his brain fills in. _At the compound. School. The lake house. With Tony. May. Ned. _All of the usual places and people are right there on the tip of his tongue and none of them is right. He can’t remember. Why can’t he remember? “I was—”

“You were here, Peter. And you were making real progress. Please believe me when I say I sincerely hope we can somehow get back to that point. Get you well again.”

Frustration has Peter grinding his teeth. “I’m not _un_well_,_” he says.

“Peter—”

“No. I’m not your patient. I’m not _violent_.”

Doctor Lake doesn’t respond. He interlinks his fingers around his thermos and places his hands in his lap, regarding Peter with a patient expression.

“I’m _not_.”

Lake’s continued silence, his measured gaze, makes Peter bristle with anger. But then, as the silence drags on under the doctor’s unreadable expression, that anger begins to wilt. He thinks of the orderly yesterday, the one with the bruised face. Thinks of Karen’s — no, _the woman’s_ — cry as he’d yanked her into the doorframe in his effort to escape.

“Yesterday was different,” he says, feeling defensive. He doesn’t know why he feels the need to try and explain himself. Not to this man, holding him here and trying to mess with his head. He doesn’t owe him anything. 

Lake cocks his head, raising an eyebrow slightly, but he still doesn’t speak.

Peter exhales hard. “You were holding me against my will,” he says. Shakes his head. “_Are_. _Are_ holding me against my will. I was defending myself. I didn’t—”

He bites his tongue. Turns away, frustrated. What is he even saying? Why should he care whether he hurt the people who kidnapped him? Drugged him? Tied him to a bed and let him stew for hours?

He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. His realises his knee is bobbing up and down. He forces it to still.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” Doctor Lake says. “In your right mind, you wouldn’t — of course not. But you’re not in your right mind, Peter, and the fact of the matter is that you did. We can’t allow that kind of behaviour here. You understand.”

“_What _kind of behaviour?”

“The kind you demonstrated yesterday. The kind that brought you to us in the first place.”

With this, Peter has had enough. He shakes his head. Scoffs. “This is stupid.”

“What is?”

“This!” Peter swings an arm out, gesturing at the room, at Lake. “All of this. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it isn’t going to work. I’m not an _idiot_. I know this isn’t real.”

Doctor Lake tips his head again, face curious.

“This isn’t real?” he asks.

“No.”

“The bed you’re sitting on isn’t real? You and I, sitting here, having this conversation right now isn’t real?”

“That’s not—” Peter starts to protest, but he cuts himself off. The sudden feeling that he is following a trail of breadcrumbs straight into a metaphorical mousetrap has him biting his tongue.

“If this isn’t real, then tell me, Peter: what is?”

Peter sets his jaw. Looks away. He knows what this guy is doing, and he refuses to give him the satisfaction. He’s done playing games.

“Is it the people back home, wanting nothing more than for you to get better?” the doctor prods.

It’s a low blow. Peter’s fingers dig into the mattress.

“Is it Spider-man?”

Now, Peter stiffens. He turns his head sharply, feeling his hackles rise.

The doctor’s face is unreadable.

“Yes,” the man says. ”I know about Spider-man.”

This shouldn’t surprise Peter — deep down he’d known when he’d been unable to break out of this room, unable to break the hold the orderlies had on him, felt his fingers slide away from the wall like any other fingers that they must have known about his abilities; how else would they have been able to block him from them? — but still, his heart gives an uncomfortable thump against his sternum. 

He has to take several controlled breaths before he can speak, and when he does, his voice still trembles.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lake’s smile is sympathetic, but something about it sends a creeping feeling across Peter’s skin.

“I don’t want you to be afraid, Peter,” he says. “There’s no need to pretend here. No need for secrecy. I’ve already told you: we’ve been through all this before. Everything there is to know, I already know it.”

Peter sincerely doubts that. But not knowing _everything_ doesn’t mean this man doesn’t know _enough_. He holds the doctors’ gaze; under it, he is reminded of Homecoming night. Of sitting in the back of a car with a gun pointed towards his chest and a threat pointed towards his family. Of lying through his teeth in a last-ditch effort to save his skin and knowing even as the words came out of his mouth that it was futile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says again.

It hadn’t worked then, and the glint in Lake’s eyes tells Peter that it isn’t going to work now, either.

“So you don’t believe that you are Spider-man?” the doctor asks.

Peter doesn’t answer.

“You don’t believe that you have enhanced abilities? Increased strength, heightened senses? That you are able to stick to walls?”

Adrenaline thunders through Peter’s bloodstream. Ever since he was bitten, it has been a familiar friend — in combination with his spidey-sense it’s gotten him out of more than a few precarious situations, given him the upper hand in scuffles he might not have otherwise won, kept him swinging long after he should have been able to — but now, with nowhere for it to go, all it does is make him shake.

His heartbeat is growing loud in his ears. He looks to the door. Through the small glass pane in it he can see the partial profile of the orderly standing sentry outside. He looks to the window; the gridded bars embedded in the concrete there remain as firm and unmovable as they were yesterday. Peter didn’t think it was possible, but suddenly the room seems so much smaller than it did before, like the walls are closing in. There is nowhere to go, and Peter is all too aware that he is just as powerless sitting here as he was under the full weight of the still-receding drugs. Just as powerless as he was every single day of his life before that school trip to Oscorp.

The urge to run — to where, Peter doesn’t know — is almost overwhelming, but the memories of arms around his chest and leather around his wrists hold him still, the fear of it all like a rod in his spine as he sits there rigid, breaths coming short and shallow.

“What do you want?” he whispers.

“To help you, Peter. That’s all. To help you see that this world you have created for yourself — this world in which you are Spider-man — is nothing more than the creation of an unstable mind.”

There is, as there has been throughout this entire conversation, nothing but sincerity in Lake’s voice, and that is perhaps more terrifying than anything else. Of all the awful things Peter could ever imagine happening to him since his transformation — people wanting to study him, his identity being outed to the world, hell, even being locked up on the freaking Raft — the idea that the whole thing might not have ever happened at all is by far the worst.

(_I’m nothing without this suit._)

He squeezes his eyes shut. Shakes his head.

(But then, it was never really the suit he was nothing without.)

“No,” he says.

“Yes,” Lake counters. “I’m sorry Peter, but this is the truth. I know it’s incredibly difficult for you to accept, and I wish there was a way to ease you in more gently, but it’s important for your treatment here that we don’t entertain the delusion any further. Spider-man is not real.”

“Stop.”

“The sooner you can start to accept this again — start to recognise that Spider-man is a fantasy, a coping mechanism developed as a result of a series of traumas inflicted on an already vulnerable mind — the sooner the process of recovery can begin. The sooner you can start to get better.”

“_Stop. _”

“It will take time, Peter, I won’t lie to you, but I am confident that with enough of it, combined with careful treatment and the right medication, you will be able to return home and lead a reasonably normal life. Plenty of people diagnosed with Schizophrenia manage to function in society with very few problems at all.”

“_Stop it! _”

Without conscious decision, Peter finds himself on his feet, fists clenched at his sides, body vibrating so hard he might just fly apart. He glares down at the doctor. He can feel his pulse throbbing in his skull. In his fingertips. He sees Lake’s composure slip momentarily, a flicker of something akin to fear crossing the man’s features, and for a few brief, heady seconds, Peter revels in the expression on the man’s face.

_Good, _he thinks, _you should be scared. _

Then there is the urgent clink of keys in the lock, and instantly, it becomes Peter who is afraid.

The haze of anger is washed away in a swell of sickening fear. Peter glances wide-eyed to the door, back to Lake, who has managed to school his expression once again.

“I—” Peter starts. And then snaps his mouth shut so quickly that his teeth clack. He won’t beg. He _won’t_.

But when the orderly steps inside, face firm and eyes hard, Peter feels his resolve begin to crack. The anticipatory terror renders any sense of pride null and void as the prospect of another day of staring blankly at a series of walls that melt and drip around him rears its head.

Peter looks at Lake; Lake looks to the orderly and—

“We’re okay here, Greg, thank you,” the doctor says.

He turns to face Peter.

“We _are_ okay, aren’t we, Peter?”

Peter stares at Lake, stunned. The address is so far removed from his expectations that it takes a moment for Peter to realise he is supposed to respond, and the dizzying sense of relief that comes with knowing that for the moment he is not about to be once again drugged to within an inch of his life is so palpable that it’s only after he nods out a shaky, “Y—yeah”, only after he lowers himself back to the bed (though _lowering _is a generous description — it’s less of a controlled movement and more a result of his legs giving out beneath him) that that relief begins to slide into confusion. Suspicion.

Peter feels the weight of the orderly’s cautious gaze on him, but he ignores it. He keeps his own eyes on Doctor Lake, waiting for the man to show his hand, to change his mind.

“If you’re sure,” the orderly says, his tone betraying that he himself very much isn’t.

“I am. You can wait outside, thank you.”

A moment more of hesitation, and then the orderly excuses himself. The sound of the lock turning once again in his wake is all the more loud for the silence that follows it — silence in which Peter struggles to supress the itchy nervousness that has begun to burrow under his skin, like a thousand tiny bugs skittering up and down the length of his body. He tries to get a read on Lake’s expression, but as he has now come to expect, the man’s face betrays none of his thoughts.

When the silence is on the verge of becoming unbearable, Lake finally speaks.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Whatever Peter imagined might come out of the doctor’s mouth, it hadn’t been that.

The apology, as far as Peter can tell, seems genuine. And yet for some reason he can’t pinpoint, rather than easing his anxiety, all it does is exacerbate it. Perhaps it because he is starting to feel like every word that comes out of Lake’s mouth is a calculated move — a maneuver in a game that Peter doesn’t know how to play.

Didn’t mean to upset him? Peter doesn’t know what possible other reaction the man could have been expecting. How did he think Peter was going to respond to being told that the most amazing thing that has ever happened to him is nothing more than a figment of his imagination? That he is mentally ill? That the last two years of his life as he knows it didn’t happen at all?

_Exactly the way you did, _answers a small, mistrustful voice in the back of Peter’s mind.

He swallows.

“Perhaps this is too much too soon,” Lake continues. “Perhaps it would be best to give you a few days to readjust before we speak in depth about this. Give you some time to settle in, feel comfortable again. To realise that we all want what’s best for you.”

Peter’s eyes go to the door, where the orderly is now watching through the small window. It’s too far away to make out his face, but Peter doesn’t need to. “That’s not going to happen,” he says, voice small, hoarse, but firm. “I don’t belong here.”

Lake nods. Acknowledgement but not agreement. He looks almost disappointed.

“You can’t keep me here,” Peter goes on.

The look of disappointment deepens. “You aren’t a prisoner, Peter; you’re a patient. But… I _am_ afraid we can’t allow you to leave.”

_Semantics_. Prisoner, patient — what does it matter when the end result is the same?

Peter shakes his head. “I’m a minor,” he says. “I’m sixteen. You need parental consent, and there’s no way—“

“We have it, Peter.”

Peter freezes.

No. There’s no way. No way.

“No you— you’re lying. You don’t. She wouldn’t.”

Lake gets to his feet. Instinctively, Peter flinches back, but all the doctor does is place the chair back under the desk.

“She didn’t have to,” the man says. “The court order nullifies the need for her permission. But you should know that she is fully supportive of your stay here. She knows this is the best place for you to be right now, as I hope you will once again come to realise, too.”

He heads toward the door, leaving Peter sitting on the bed, staring after him and struggling to catch his breath. This time, it is nothing to do with asthma.

“Try to relax, Peter. We’ll talk again soon.”

By the time Peter finds his voice to reply — though the words are still unreachable — Lake is gone.

The lock clicks.

Quiet is all Peter has for company.

He sits there in it for a long time, turning everything over and over in his mind until he is sure he will go mad from it. And then he paces. Thinks some more.

It’s all bullshit.

He runs his hands through his hair. He rubs up and down his arms. He curls his fingers into his palms to stop from worrying at his nails.

He ends up standing at the window.

More bullshit. He can’t see the fucking Hudson. He can’t see anything that looks reminiscent of New York at all — in the distance all of it is blurry.

He stares at the vague outlines of buildings for a long time, and then he stares at the bedside cabinet for longer. When he finally takes a deep breath, picks up the glasses and places them on his face, the effect is instantaneous: the world around him sharpens, everything pulling into focus as the persistent blurriness that has plagued his vision since he awoke here is resolved. Minute details of the room that he hadn’t previously noticed make themselves known. Colours are crisper.

Peter snatches the frames off his face and throws them across the room. They skitter along the floor, coming to rest against the leg of the desk.

His chest heaves with the effort of steadying his breaths.

“I’m not crazy,” he says.

And then again, louder: “I’m _not_ crazy.”

His only answer is silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think!!
> 
> If you want to chat you can find me on tumblr @ [forensicleaf](https://forensicleaf.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big love to [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest) as always! Thank you for cheering me on <3

_My name is Peter Parker. _

_I am Spider-man. _

_This isn’t real._

This has become the mantra by which Peter clings to the fraying threads of his resolve.

It is these words that he whispers in the morning, when the clunk of a deadbolt signals the start of another day of misery. These words that he murmurs to himself in the dark, in the dead of night when there is no one to hear him but the stars. It is these words that he silently tells himself now as he shuffles down the hall, the entirety of his grainy focus fixed on dragging his feet forward, step by heavy step.

He’s on his way to the rec room, the same as he is every day at this time. Social hour — which is in fact two separate two-hour periods — is a mandatory staple of daily life in this place, and though Peter can think of about a million things he would rather be doing than being pushed into playing _Go Fish!_ or whatever else with the other residents here, today it had taken little prodding to get him to leave his room.

Today, he is just too tired to argue.

“Hey look, it’s _Spider-man._”

To no surprise, Dai’s drawling voice is the first to greet Peter as the hallway opens up into the large lounge area. The other boy is sprawled out on the sofa by the window, twisting the same Rubik’s cube he’s always twisting, and getting nowhere with it as usual. He lifts his gaze to meet Peter’s, flashes him an unkind grin.

“Catch any bad guys today?”

Over the past few days, Peter has come to expect this from Dai, but still, heat rushes to his face. He bites his tongue, swallowing the retort that swells up in his chest.

“Dai,” one of the orderlies — Anil, Peter thinks — says with a frown.

“What? It’s not my fault he thinks he’s best buds with the Avengers.”

“_Dai._”

Dai scoffs. He looks back to Peter, holds his gaze one moment longer than is comfortable, then just shrugs, turning back to his Rubik’s cube.

“Whatever.”

Peter allows himself a second to collect himself, then, fists clenched and jaw tight, he takes a seat on the sofa by the water dispenser — about as far away he can get from Dai and everybody else without being accused of being anti-social. Coming to the rec room is non-negotiable, sure, but that doesn’t mean Peter has to join in. And unless he’s forced to, he won’t. Instead, he wedges himself into the corner of the sofa, as he did yesterday and all the days before, and waits for the moment when he’s allowed to leave.

A light tut from across the room has him lifting his head.

“Hi _Peter_,” says Janine, looking up from the jigsaw on the table in front of her to give Dai a pointed look. It goes unacknowledged, of course, and she looks to Peter and rolls her eyes. Peter offers only a brief, tight smile in return.

He does feel a tiny stab of guilt for the way her expression drops slightly, but he pushes it away: he has no interest in making friends here. He doesn’t want to play Monopoly, or build a house of cards, or paint a fucking picture. What little he has already conceded to all of this is all that he is willing to. Any more, any effort to assimilate, and it feels like it would be an admission that all of this might be real. And it isn’t. It can’t be.

It can’t be.

It has been four days now since he tried to escape, and four days since he failed. Four days since he’d lain in bed under the weight of enough sedatives to subdue an elephant, unable to do anything but stare unfocused as the ceiling warped and rippled above him, and three since he’d come out on the other side and promised that he would never allow himself to feel that despondent, or helpless, or afraid again.

It’s already a promise he’s not sure he can keep.

With each day that passes it is getting that little bit harder to hold on to the determination that sent him sprinting down a hallway, harder to hold onto the conviction that had him kicking and screaming and almost breaking someone’s nose in his effort to escape, that had him calling Doctor Lake a liar to his face. Days of moving through the world in a sluggish haze, of opening his eyes to a blurry focus, of touching his hands to numerous walls only to feel the surface slide beneath his fingertips every single time are beginning to take their toll. But it’s not just the lack of energy — which is constant and relentless; the Peter Parker who made a break for it seems almost like a stranger, and the Peter Parker who put on a red and blue suit and swung around New York City seems even more distant, still — nor even the continued lack of his abilities that is wearing Peter down so much as it is the unwavering commitment that everyone here seems to have to this ruse.

For days, Peter has been observing, trying to spot the cracks in the façade, but even he has to admit that for all appearances, this place seems to be exactly what it is pretending to be: a psychiatric hospital.

He and the four other supposed patients here have this wing to themselves, given that they are all under eighteen and as such have to be kept separate from the general population. They are made up of three boys and two girls: other than Peter there is Dai, who Peter had decided to avoid within about three seconds of meeting him; Robbie, who seems friendly enough, but tends to keep to himself; Janine, who always makes an effort to say hello; and Laura, who doesn’t say anything at all, but every once in a while will stop blinking and just scream and scream and scream.

A rotating team of nurses and orderlies keep an eye on the five of them, coming and going to various schedules that Peter is still trying to memorise. As far as he can tell, no one is being mistreated by them, but that doesn't make this okay by any stretch of the imagination. There is no privacy here at all. Every hour someone will visit his room — once every two during the night — but that's not even the worst part.

"Peter. It's that time again, hon. You know the drill."

_This_ is the worst part.

Peter scowls at the little paper cup that Julie holds out towards him, making no attempt to move. The fogginess and lethargy brought on by the last dose is only just starting to lift, and while they’ve all told him again and again that the drugs are helping — helping to balance his brain — they make Peter feel like he’s experiencing the world as if wading through soup.

At his lack of movement, Julie tips her head. "Peter—"

“I feel okay today,” Peter says. “Please, I don’t need them.”

Julie is part of the team of nurses that form the weekend staff. Her stern face, accentuated by hair scraped back into the tightest bun Peter has ever seen had initially led him to be wary of her, but he had quickly learned he needn’t be, at least not excessively: it turns out she — like almost everyone else here seems to be — is exceedingly lovely. It's almost infuriating.

She sighs, glances quickly over her shoulder to where Anil is watching their interaction with a relaxed but alert eye, then takes a seat beside Peter on the plush double sofa. She gives his hand a little squeeze.

“You’re feeling okay because you took your meds this morning. It’s how this works — you know that. It’s why you need to keep taking them.”

Frustrated tears prick at the corners of Peter’s eyes. He wants to smack the little cup straight out of Julie’s hand. He wants to scream.

He knows better by now.

“They make me stupid.”

It’s a mumbled admission. Not just because he doesn’t want the others — specifically Dai — to hear him, but also because for Peter — Decathlon Team member, all around bright spark, and Tony Stark-dubbed _boy wonder — _the admission is painful and embarrassing.

He casts a quick sideways glance to Julie, whose eyes are soft with sympathy.

“Oh honey,” she says, “everyone feels that way at first. You just need to give yourself time to adjust. But you know, if the new prescription really isn’t working for you, Dr Lake can always change it.” The smile she gives him is apologetic. “For now though…”

She raises the tiny cup again.

Peter stares straight through it for a second, forcing himself to breathe. Then he swallows hard and takes it from her.

He looks down at the two little tablets sitting inside of it — one white, one pink and blue, same as always. Not long after his initial talk with Doctor Lake when he had been presented with his first dose, he had steadfastly refused to take them — thrown them across the room, in fact — but now he doesn’t bother with more than a light protest; there are worse ways to take mediation. His arm still itches from numerous injection sites borne of his non-compliance. He can still feel the phantom pressure of restraints long-gone encircling his wrists.

He brushes off a shiver.

At least, he thinks bitterly, at least this way he's in control.

Sort of.

He looks dispassionately at the brightly coloured pill sitting beside its plain counterpart. The cup reminds him of the kind he used to fill to the brim with ketchup at McDonald’s after a Saturday of traipsing round the arcades at Coney Island with Ben, and the comparison sends a pang of longing through his chest.

"C'mon, champ," Julie says beside him with the kind of forced brightness that can only come from seeing the absolute worst of humanity and pushing through to the other side. She hands him a Styrofoam cup filled with water. "Down the hatch." 

In the corner of the room, Laura starts to scream.

* * *

Considering that Newhaven is supposed to be a reasonably high-security facility — of which the bars on the windows, key-card swipe access and nightly lockdowns are more than enough evidence — Peter has been surprised (and a little suspicious) to find that throughout the day, the patients here are more or less allowed to roam freely within its walls.

There aren’t many places to go, but for Peter this freedom — illusive as it may be — has been invaluable, allowing him to not only walk the halls with enough frequency that he has been able to stave off the mounting cabin fever, but more importantly, that he is now able to map out the entire place in his head. Over the last few days he has learned where all the other residents’ rooms are, which hallway holds the staff room, and which the storage. The main thing, however, is that he also now knows the location of all the exits (though the catastrophic failure of his last attempt at reaching one means that for now, this information is merely filed away: if Peter has learned anything at all during his time here, it is that he needs to be smart).

When social hour is over, instead of heading back to his room as intended, Peter takes a detour down towards the main desk.

He falters slightly when he sees who is sitting behind it, but forces himself to keep walking. He needs to do this now; the midday pills are starting to kick in — starting to cloud his head and weigh him down — and Peter figures he’s only got about another thirty minutes or so of tangible energy or lucidity left before he has to just go and lie down for a bit. Let the poison run its course until the next dose starts the vicious cycle all over again.

On the other side of the desk, Carl is squinting intensely at the computer in front of him. Even before he lifts his head, Peter can see the dark shadows lingering under the guy’s eyes. Shadows he put there. He knows from overhearing the others talking that he didn’t actually break the man’s nose, but the bruising still looks ugly against Carl’s skin, and the sight of it twists Peter’s gut with a conflicted sense of guilt.

That guilt is only compounded when Carl notices Peter standing there and straightens, face breaking not into a scowl as Peter had expected, (and would probably be completely justified) but a smile — albeit a tired-looking, slightly forced one.

“Hey, man,” Carl says. “You all right?”

Peter swallows. While Carl hasn’t shown any hostility towards him over the last few days (not that he’s really had the chance to; Peter has done his best to avoid the man at any cost after what happened), he hasn’t exactly been friendly either, at least not in the way that most of the other orderlies have tried to be. Peter doesn’t actually think that means much — Carl doesn’t seem to be particularly friendly towards anyone, and if this actually were a real hospital, Peter would say that he was the kind of guy who was in this line of work because he just sort of ended up here, unlike Julie, or Karen, or Martinez, who seem like they were born to do it — but still, Peter can’t help but feel uneasy around the man.

“What is it?” Carl asks when Peter hesitates. “You need your inhaler?”

Peter blinks. “What? No, I—,” he starts. Takes a breath. Steels himself. “I want to make a phone call.”

The smile that had already begun to wither now shifts into a frown. Carl looks down at the phone sitting on the desk, then looks back up at Peter.

“Right. Yeah… Karen said you might come ask.” His mouth twists. “Sorry, kid. You know I can’t let you do that.”

Even though this was the answer he was expecting, Peter has to swallow down his disappointment. He can feel it clawing its way up his throat anyway.

“It’s just one call. That’s all I’m asking.”

But Carl shakes his head. “I know, but it’s no can do,” he says with a shrug that is at least halfway apologetic. “Doc’s orders.”

Of course it is.

Peter grips the edge of the desk — partly out of frustration, partly because he is starting to feel like his equilibrium is shifting. Whatever drugs they have him on, one side effect is that they bring about a sensation akin to standing on a boat in calm waters: not enough movement to topple him, but enough to ever-so-slightly throw off his balance. That’s on the ‘doc’s orders’, too.

He blows out a breath. He can feel the ridged grain of the wood under his fingertips and he presses in harder.

“I just—“ Against his control, his voice cracks. “_Please_. I just want to speak to my aunt.”

Carl groans, rubbing across his brow. “Peter… come on, man. I know Karen already went through this with you. Lake and Martinez, too.”

“I just don’t see how speaking to her is supposed to ‘jeopardise my treatment’?” Peter says, feeling the strain creeping in. Every time he has demanded, asked, near-enough _begged_ to use the phone it’s the same excuses, the same half-assed reasoning and patronising explanations: they can’t risk another setback, they can’t take the chance that the conversation might be triggering for him, they need to wait until he’s adjusted to the new medication — _your aunt understands, Peter, why can’t you?_

All the dodging and evading only affirms what Peter is already sure of: May doesn’t know he is here.

He knows May would never do this to him, had been certain of it even as Lake had stunned him silent with the allegation, but still, after days of being told otherwise, days of everything he knows to be true feeling further and further away, all he needs is to hear her — _anyone_ — confirm that he’s right.

“No external stimuli until after your evaluation, Peter,” Carl tells him, predictably. “It’s the same for everyone on a new treatment plan. Soon as the doc gives the all clear, you can call her, but until then, the answer’s gonna be no every time.”

“But if I could just—”

“Look, I’m not going to argue with you about this, man,” Carl cuts him off. There is no harshness to his tone, but even so, somehow the weary exasperation — like Peter is a petulant child, pestering a parent for candy at the store — is worse.

Peter bristles.

“I’m not _arguing_, I’m just—”

“Peter.”

“It’s been _days_ and no one will let me talk to her!”

Carl draws himself upright in his chair, holds his hand out, palm toward Peter. When he speaks, his voice is low.

“I’m gonna need you to calm it down here, pal.”

“I _am_ calm!” Peter bites back, any self-awareness lost for a moment to a hot surge of irritation. Everyone keeps doing this — talking to him like he’s one moment away from exploding every time he doesn’t just meekly go along with whatever he’s told, talking to him like he’s unpredictable, _dangerous, _and he hates it_. _It’s making him overanalyse his every reaction—

…_shit._

—including this one. That awareness floods back in an instant, bringing with it a steady stream of internal reproach as he watches Carl’s eyebrows rise.

“Do I need to call Lake?” the man asks.

Peter shuts his mouth, frustration mingling with shame at how quickly he does so. He’s Spider-man, for god’s sake. He throws himself from heights that would make even the most fearless tremble without breaking a sweat. He’s taken on regular men, and enhanced men, and ruthless men in mechanised suits — not to mention freaking _aliens. _So why is it that the mere mention of Doctor Lake is enough to render him mute?

His teeth clench so hard he can almost hear his jaw creaking.

“Peter?”

Peter glances down; the phone is right there, easily within his reach. May is right there. _Help _is right there. Why is he even wasting time asking? He could just reach out and take the phone and — and—

_And then what?_

_How far would you get?_

He takes a breath. Lifts his eyes. Meets Carl’s expectant gaze.

“No,” he grinds out.

He’ll have to find another way.

* * *

Janine catches up to him in the hallway.

“Pete,” she says, falling into step beside him.

Peter keeps walking. Not only because he has no desire to talk to her, but also because not even all of the anger and frustration presently coursing through his veins is enough to combat the creeping advancement of the drugs, now making his every step a laborious effort. If he stops, he’s not sure he’ll be able to start again. He’s tired. He just wants to lie down.

But Janine is persistent.

“Peter, hey. Hey. _Hey_.”

Only when she moves to block his path does Peter finally stop. Like everything else over the last five days, the choice is taken away from him: Janine isn’t particularly tall, nor heavy-set, but she is a lot sturdier at present than Peter, who sways slightly where he stands.

He clenches his jaw.

“What?” he snaps, he himself surprised at the ferocity with which the question leaves his mouth — surprised and yet suddenly uncaring.

To her credit, Janine doesn’t seem fazed, though. She simply blinks. “What do you mean, _what_?”

“I mean, _what_? What do you want?”

Her eyebrows draw together, mouth turning down at the corners. “I _wanted _to see if you were okay.”

Peter stares. Okay? _Okay?_ If he had the energy, he’d laugh. As it is, he just feels like crying. As quickly as it came, the heat in his chest dissipates, leaving behind only a hollow sort of ache and a lethargy he has become all too familiar with in his time here.

“What do you care?” he says, making to shoulder past Janine, but she sidesteps, effectively cutting him off. Her stance is as determined and immovable as his is fragile.

“Hey, cut it out,” she says, frowning. Her eyes are deep with concern. “What are you talking about? Of course I care. You’re my friend.”

She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like it should mean something to Peter, like the words should spark something other than a deep yearning for his real, actual friends. For his family.

_God, _he misses them all. He misses them so much. He wonders what they’re all doing, how much they must be freaking out not knowing where he is — May and Tony especially. He’d do anything to be back with them right now, but instead, he’s stuck here, trapped and forced to play along with this sham, forced to swallow pills and listen to everyone tell him he’s lost his mind.

He closes his eyes. Feels the slowness of it. The heaviness as he opens them again.

“Please, just leave me alone,” he says, not even caring how pathetic he sounds. At least the drugs here are good for one thing.

“What, so you can go and feel sorry for yourself?” Janine asks, and though the words bite, her voice is kind. “Look, I know Doctor Lake said we should all give you some space right now, and if you really want me to go, I will, but I kinda hoped…”

Peter looks up, face blank, inflection just as much so. “Hoped what?”

“Well, that I could… I don’t know. Help, maybe?”

Peter blows out a breath. _Again with the help_.

“I’m good, thanks,” he says. He moves to step around her once more, and this time, he thinks she is going to let him past. But then her hand catches his arm.

“Pete, come on, are you serious? It’s me.”

Peter stops. He looks down at the hand on his arm, looks up at Janine.

“We’re not friends,” he says, voice flat. “I don’t even know who you are.”

He doesn’t mean to be harsh — just matter of fact — but he can see that where his anger landed no blows, these words do. Janine drops his arm like his skin has scalded her. Steps back.

“Of course you do,” she says, cheeks tinging pink. “I mean, maybe you don’t remember right now, but—”

“I don’t want to.”

The words are out of Peter’s mouth before he can think them through — an instinctive response to the same phrase that has been used to feed him lies ever since he arrived here, and a truthful one, too: if this really _is_ his life, it’s immeasurably worse than the one he knows — why on Earth would he want to remember it?

But no matter Peter’s hatred of this place, no matter the truth of his words, the raw hurt that flashes across Janine’s face wasn’t his intention.

“You don’t mean that,” she says. It isn’t a question, but Peter hears the waver in her voice, sees the sliver of doubt in her eyes. He tries to muster up some kind of regret, but all he feels is tired, detached in a way that means even though he knows he should apologise, he doesn’t. He just stands there, watching as Janine’s face shutters and hardens in his silence.

“Right” she says eventually, mouth pressed into a thin line. She shakes her head, makes to turn away from him, but seems to think better of it. “You know what?” She rounds back on him. Peter sees the tell-tale shimmering of tears, though she is quick to blink them away. “You always go on and on about how Spider-man made you a hero, but honestly, Pete, I think he just makes you kind of a dick.”

With that, she turns on her heels, long dark hair trailing behind her as she strides away. Peter watches her go, and then he resumes the slow trek to his room.

The regret rises as he walks — Janine has always gone out of her way to be nice to him, and he’s clearly hurt her feelings — but he reminds himself that he isn’t here to make friends. For all he knows, she’s involved in whatever is going on here just as much as Doctor Lake is. At the very least, she’s a distraction.

His main goal, the focus of all his lucid moments, has to be getting out of here. Getting home.

He can’t lose sight of that.

He keeps walking.

* * *

Janine doesn’t say hello at dinner. In the second social hour of the day, she is just as silent.

Peter tries to tell himself he doesn’t care, but sitting there pressed into the corner of the sofa, listening to Dai make subtle jabs when the orderlies aren’t paying attention, listening to Laura and her screaming, the loneliness seems just that little more present than it had that morning.

_This isn’t real, _he reminds himself. _It isn’t real. It doesn’t matter. _

Later, though, lying awake and listening to the orderlies do their rounds, drowsy in that artificial way that makes it impossible to actually sleep, Peter finds himself struck by a memory.

It’s one he has thought of often over the last few days. In it, he and Ned are about nine years old, round-faced and still small enough to cram together on the upper bunk of the two-tier bed Peter had gotten for his birthday that year. Ben is still alive. In just a few short months the battle of New York will happen, the Avengers will become household names — no one in their generation will grow up without a Captain America shield, without toy Hulk fists or Thor’s hammers — but for now, it is just the Iron Man mask hanging from the handle of the wardrobe and the glow of the replica repulsors that provide the dim light by which the two boys talk much later into the night than they should.

“Do you think aliens are real?” nine-year-old Ned whispers in the quasi-darkness. Independence Day had been running on the box that night and Ben had let them stay up to watch it — probably a mistake given that the both of them are now too freaked out to sleep.

“No,” the younger Peter whispers back, because he doesn’t want Ned to think he’s a baby, that he’s scared.

Then, “Yes,” because he realises this is _Ned, _not Flash Thompson.

“Me too,” says Ned, eyes wide. “But like, do you think they’ve got them in Area 51? In all the — in the smoke and stuff?”

Peter pulls the repulsor and the pale blue light emitting from it a little bit closer. Goosebumps rise along his arms.

“I don’t know.”

“Probably not, right? I mean, it would be a huge secret. Like, um, like a con— uh, a cosp…”

“Conspiracy?”

“Right. Yeah. A conspiracy. If they’d really come to Earth already, there’d be some proof, right? It’s not like they could keep that many people quiet.”

Ned pauses.

“Right?”

“Right,” Peter agrees quickly. “Right.”

Never mind that by the time a year had passed, the whole world knew the contrary to be true, Ned’s words from that night haunt Peter now. He tries not to think about it, but how can he not? No matter how much he tries to avoid it, no matter how confident he is of his own sanity, the same question pops up in his mind again and again:

How many people would you need to keep quiet?

Lake, Karen, Martinez, Carl, Dai, Janine, Julie… the list goes on and on. Is it really feasible that all of them are in on this?

It has to be, Peter thinks, rolling to face the wall as the orderlies reach his room, check he is in bed, and lock the door behind them.

The lights go out.

It _has _to be.

If it’s not…

If it’s not…

“My name is Peter Parker,” he whispers into the dark. “I’m Spider-man. This isn’t real.”

It takes him a long time to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. I hope this doesn't disappoint! Please leave a little comment to let me know what you think. You can also hit me up at forensicleaf on tumblr :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE MIND THE UPDATED TAGS FOR THIS CHAPTER. If you’ve got any questions or want clarifications on what to expect please feel free to message me on tumblr under the same handle <3
> 
> Oodles of love and gratitude to [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/pseuds/seekrest) as always!

Laura is quieter than usual today.

Peter hates that he’s been here long enough to recognise that.

She’s perched on the seat that curves along the bay window, elbows on the sill and chin resting atop her arms. She stares, unmoving, out over the courtyard, maybe watching the sparrows that like to wash their feathers in the birdbath down there, or perhaps the lower-security patients that are allowed to roam around outside and tend to the flowers. The afternoon sunlight bathes her skin, catching the thin silver scars that criss-cross her forearms, and, not for the first time, Peter finds himself wondering what caused them, what happened to her.

He hasn’t asked, and he isn’t going to, despite the curiosity. Nobody asks anybody else what brought them here to Newhaven. It’s one of this place’s unspoken rules — like always turning the handles so the doors close quietly, or being finished with breakfast by nine-thirty, even though technically it’s served until ten — though Peter feels that it is the only one that puts him on an unfair standing with his fellow patients. While he knows next to nothing about them, they clearly know all about him; Spider-man is notorious in these halls. As, it turns out, is Peter Parker.

A groan has him turning his head to one of the tables in the center of the room where Janine, Robbie, and Karen have been playing cards for the past hour or so. They had started with Snap, or some variation of it, judging by the semi-rapid _shick shick shick _of cards being drawn and intermittent slapping of hands on the table, but now it seems they’ve moved onto something that involves a little more skill.

The groan had come from Janine, who is staring at the card Robbie has just laid down, eyebrows scrunched together. “Again?” she says. “Really? What are you doing, keeping those up your sleeve?”

Robbie hunches down in his seat, lifting the fan of cards in his hand to cover his grin.

“Oh, you’re sneaky,” laughs Karen, side-eyeing him with a shake of her head. She zeroes in on her own cards, face twisting in concentration as her fingers dance along her hand. “Hmm… Oh! Gotcha! Sorry Janine.”

Janine scowls at the card Karen lays down for a good few seconds.

“I don’t know why I play with either of you,” she says, dry, as she draws a card from the stack.

Instantly, her face falls.

She places the newly-drawn card on the discard pile, and then draws another. Places that one on the pile, too. She does the same again. And again. And again.

Karen clears her throat.

“Janine, sweetheart, it’s Robbie’s turn, now.”

“I know,” Janine says, still pulling cards from the deck and adding them to the pile. Her voice has gone tight. “I know, _I know_, but it was a six so I— I have to—“ More and more cards until— “Ah! There.” She sighs, hanging her head and patting the newest card on the pile one, two, three, four, five, six times. “It’s okay now. It’s okay. Sorry, Robbie. Sorry.”

Robbie offers a quick smile. Shrugs. “S’okay,” he murmurs, but Janine shakes her head, face pinched in frustration.

“Maybe we should just take them out,” she says to Karen, eyes pleading. “This isn’t working. I knew it wouldn’t. We should just — I don’t know, play checkers or something instead. Can’t go all” — she waves a hand — “_nutso_ on checkers.”

Peter almost winces at that. No matter how he feels about Janine, it’s painful to watch her self-deprecate over something she clearly can’t help (and it _is_ clear from the steady crimson that floods her cheeks each time it happens that she can’t help it, even if Peter had initially wondered if it was an act). It’s worse still to see her try and make a joke of it when it’s obvious to everyone in the room that it bothers her.

“Stop it,” Karen chides, jumping on Peter’s thought process. “Don’t say things like that. Look how much better you are since last month — only twice today is a huge improvement and you know it.”

Janine huffs, blowing a strand of hair off her face. It falls back down and she tucks it behind her ear. “Yeah, well. Doesn’t feel like it,” she grumbles. But a few moments under Karen’s steady gaze has her conceding with a roll of her eyes, “Fine, fine, it’s getting better. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” replies Karen brightly as Robbie quietly takes his turn. She makes to draw a card of her own but pauses, examining the thin pile left on the table with a frown. “Hmm… new game?”

“Sure,” Janine says.

Robbie nods.

“Something else, or more of the same? We could play Palace?”

Janine extends her hands over her head, stretching. “Ugh. I don’t mind, whatever.”

“Palace it is,” Karen announces. “Peter, sweetheart, do you want to join?”

Peter blinks, feeling like he’s clearing a fog. He’s gotten so used to sitting alone, so used to observing instead of participating, that it takes a moment to realise he’s being spoken to. He’s made his position clear enough by now that no one really bothers much anymore unless it’s to remind him it’s time to take his meds.

“Huh?”

“She asked if you wanted to take a break from being a creepy loner,” Dai calls from the other sofa, not even pausing the twisting of his hands.

Peter’s face flares hot. His tongue reacts before he can stop it. “Yeah? Where are your cards, then?”

Immediately, he clamps his mouth shut, dismayed by his own recklessness — _stupid, stupid. You know not to rise to the bait, know by now it’s going to do nothing but get you in trouble, what were you thinking?_ — but it’s too late: the twisting stops; Peter sees Davis’ head perk up over in the corner where he’d been quietly filling out charts; Dai’s eyes leave the Rubik’s cube and meet Peter’s, glaring.

“Boys,” Karen says, turning her disapproving gaze between the two of them, though in Peter’s direction, it shifts more to a surprised concern. “No name calling, thank you.” This is addressed to Dai, who sets his jaw with a scowl, narrowed eyes lingering pointedly a moment longer on Peter before sliding away.

“Right,” he mutters to the wall. “Sorry.” Though to Peter, he doesn’t sound very sorry at all.

But ultimately, it doesn’t matter what Peter thinks: the half-hearted apology seems to satisfy Davis, who looks down to his clipboard once again, and it seems to satisfy Karen as well, because she doesn’t take it any further — simply clears her throat and says, “You know, you’re welcome to play, too, Dai.”

“Can’t,” Dai hits back, already intently refocused on the cube in his hands. “Busy.”

Peter sees Janine’s shake of the head out of the corner of his eye, but Karen doesn’t appear to be bothered by the bluntness. She turns back towards Peter, her face softening as she raises a questioning eyebrow. “Well, Peter? What do you say? I know these two have missed having some actual competition, and between you and me, I think Robbie here is getting a little too cocky without our resident card shark to keep him in check. Isn’t that right, Robbie?”

Robbie ducks his head at the light teasing, mop of curly hair hiding his eyes, but Peter hears the soft snort he lets out.

“You see what I mean?” Karen turns to Peter with a smile and an exaggerated roll of her eyes, and despite himself, Peter feels his own lips twitch in response. As much as he tries, it’s really hard not to like Karen — she’s funny, and genuinely caring, and somehow when she talks to him he feels a little more like a normal person again and a little less like the unhinged, danger to society this place is doing its best to convince him he is.

But then, he’s probably just projecting: he misses _his_ Karen. He misses May. He misses Tony, Ned, MJ, Happy.

He still hasn’t been allowed to contact any of them.

“Peter?”

“Um…”

He finds himself hesitating. Maybe it _would _be a good idea to play. It might help keep his mind sharp. Might help to hold off the inevitable fogginess for a few extra minutes. Plus, he’s loathe to admit it, but he really is bored now of sitting here day after day with nothing to do except feel his brain gradually turn to jello.

He’s even more loathe to admit that he’s…

well…

_lonely_.

He slides his gaze across to Janine, but although he knows he felt her eyes on him in the periphery, when he turns his head, she is focused deliberately on the cards in her hand, expression closed off and posture just as much so. She clearly hasn’t forgiven him for what he said in the hallway on Sunday — probably because Peter hasn’t brought himself to apologise, either, though his stubbornness on that front is waning: the longer this drags on, the less convinced he becomes that Janine is pretending to be anything other than unaffected by the mutually-imposed distance between them, and the more he begins to question whether he might have alienated the only other person in this place who could potentially be an ally.

He hesitates a moment, wondering if she’ll acknowledge him. Wondering if he wants her to.

It doesn’t matter either way; she doesn’t.

Peter looks back to Karen.

“No,” he says. “Er… thanks.”

Karen just nods, smile betraying no disappointment, only understanding. “Maybe next time,” she says gently.

Peter shrugs.

He realises afterwards that it’s the first time his answer wasn’t an outright _no_.

* * *

The rest of social hour slips by the same way it always does: _slowly_. But eventually, it’s over, and Peter is free to leave.

He’s off the sofa right away, but he doesn’t get more than a few steps out of the door before Karen is behind him, calling his name. His foggy brain quickly tries to come up with some excuse for the direction he was heading — he’s laid off trying to use the phone for a couple of days, mindful of the limits to which the patience he has been afforded thus far will stretch, but a couple of days has been a couple of days too many, and Peter’s own patience has by now worn thin — however, Karen doesn’t comment on the fact that his feet are pointing in the opposite direction of his room. She simply smiles and reminds him of his appointment.

His appointment.

Right.

He’d forgotten.

He resumes walking. For once, the slowness to his steps is welcomed.

* * *

If the drugs are the worst part about this place, then this is a close second.

Peter sits in a squeaky leather chair, facing Doctor Lake. His hands are flat on the seat either side of him, his thumbs tucked under his thighs in an attempt to keep them that way. Expression neutral, limbs outwardly relaxed despite the tension thrumming through them, Peter tries to give nothing away. He hadn’t missed the way the doctor’s chin had dipped in interest at his crossed arms the last time they spoke: everything in these sessions is under scrutiny.

Doctor Lake leans back in his own leather chair, this one seemingly devoid of the squeakiness that plagues Peter’s. As usual Peter thinks his demeanour makes it seem like he would be more at home on a recliner in a yard somewhere — maybe in a bar, beer in hand — instead of in a turtleneck in this aggressively neutral office. The image flashes so clearly in Peter’s mind, vivid and sharp, that for a moment he feels like it overlaps what he’s seeing with his eyes, feels like he forgets where he is.

But then, he can never forget for long.

“So,” Lake is saying, pleasant as always as Peter resists the urge to wince at the low-level pain that has started to pulse in his temple. “First things first, I’d like to go over your medication if that’s all right. I know you were having some trouble with the side effects, but we agreed to give it a few more days” — Peter has to clamp down on the weary scoff that rises in his throat. _They_ didn’t agree on anything — “and see how it went. Are you finding that things have started to settle down, now?”

If settling down means he no longer feels like heaving his guts up daily, or having to take multiple naps a day just to be able to function, then the answer is a reluctant _yes, _but there’s no way Peter is going to admit that, not when he knows that a _yes _means no change to the current dose, or to the myriad of other side effects that haven’t eased off in quite the same way — like the jitteriness, or the juxtaposing sluggishness, or the near-constant cloudiness to his thoughts.

“I… still don’t like them. The pills,” is the non-answer Peter gives, which, while definitely not what he _wants _to say, is by far the more diplomatic choice.

“What is it you don’t like about them?”

That feels like a trick question, and despite Peter’s attempt to keep his expression blank, the thought must show on his face because Lake tips his head and smiles slightly and presses on with,

“If I don’t know what the problem is then I can’t try to fix it, now, can I?”

_No, _Peter thinks, _but you can certainly try to make it worse._

“I just… don’t like the way they make me feel,” he says eventually.

“Nauseous?”

Peter shakes his head.

“Tired?”

Sure. That’s the easiest complaint to go with. The least compromising revelation. “A little, I guess.”

“Okay,” Lake says with a nod. He looks down and scribbles a quick line into the notebook in his lap. “That’s perfectly normal with the combination you’re taking at the moment. Unfortunately, it’s likely to be a side-effect of any combination you take, given the severity of your symptoms, but we can definitely make some adjustments and see if that helps.”

Peter glances up, unable to mask his surprise.

It… it can’t just be that easy, can it?

“In the long term, that is,” Lake amends, and of course it can’t be. “My concern right now would be making any kind of changes when you still seem quite resistant to treatment on a whole.”

Here, Lake scrubs a hand over his face.

“I’ll be frank with you, Peter — you aren’t engaging. And while no one can force you to, honestly, it’s starting to become concerning. The others inform me that you still aren’t participating in group activities. You don’t seem to want to reconnect with your providers or your friends. You don’t seem to want to do anything at all.”

“I want to speak to my aunt,” Peter suggests, trying very hard to keep the bite out of his voice.

Lake’s lips purse. “Ah. Well, yes, I’ve been made aware.”

“So then let me call her.”

Lake doesn’t even make a show of considering it. He just sighs. “So that you can tell her you’re being held against your will? That you don’t belong here? That your care providers are drugging you and trying to convince you that you’re sick?” He shakes his head. “We’ve been down this road before, Peter. It isn’t going to help anyone.”

“It’ll help me,” counters Peter. This time, the bite does find its way in. Lake notices. Dips his chin.

“Look,” the doctor says. “We want you to be able to speak to your family — of _course _we want that — but historically, doing so when you’re in this… in-between state, for lack of a better term, well, it— it tends to do more harm than good.”

The moment that follows, in which the two of them regard each other in tense silence — tense on Peter’s part, that is: Lake seems as unfazed and relaxed as he always does — seems to stretch on for an age.

Peter is the first to look away. He bites the inside of his cheek.

“I’m not,” he says, quiet.

Lake shifts in his chair, leaning forward in interest. “Not what?”

“Not, umm…in-between.”

Peter glances up at Lake. The man is simply waiting, face somehow both open and unreadable. Peter’s hands twitch, clammy palms sticking to the leather, though not in the way he wishes they would. He wets his lips.

“Umm. I wasn’t… I’m not trying to be rude. With the others. I was going to join in eventually, I just… wanted to sort stuff out in my head first.”

Lake’s face remains blank, though the slight tilt of his head betrays his curiousity. “Sort stuff out in your head?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess I was just” — Peter blows out a breath — “_confused_ when I, uh, when I woke up and I couldn’t remember anything? And I needed some time to think about it. But now I know. What’s— um— what’s real.”

“And that is…?”

Peter swallows. “That Spider-man never existed. That I’m not— that I don’t… have powers.”

Lake is quiet for a moment. Peter resists the urge to fidget under his contemplative gaze, quashes that itchy twitchiness that never seems to go away, no matter what stage of the drug cycle he’s in — like ants crawling over and under every inch of his skin.

Eventually, the doctor ‘hmph’s. It’s not quite a laugh — more like a hard exhale through the nose — but the edge of amusement within it is clear.

“I wish I could say I’m happy to hear that,” he says with a shake of his head. “But I don’t think you’re being honest with me. See, we both know that you’re very smart, Peter — and please never apologise for that; intelligence is a gift — but I think right now you’re using those smarts to tell me what you think I want to hear, rather than telling me the truth.”

“No,” Peter says, staying very still. “I’m not.”

“So you’ve accepted that you’re here for your own good, then? You no longer believe that we’re trying to” — Lake casts around — “harm you, or further any otherwise nefarious agenda?”

Carefully, Peter nods.

Lake smiles slightly, looking somewhere between entertained and disappointed. “As I said, you’re smart. So I know you’re also smart enough to realise when you’ve been caught out, kid.”

Like a lightning strike: “Don’t call me _kid_.”

Lake’s eyes brighten at the fierceness of the response, but Peter can’t even find it in himself to regret it; he’s too preoccupied with trying to hold back the sudden surge of longing that rushes forwards at the familiar moniker. Hearing it now, here, from this guy, feels like a tiny stab in the chest.

“Okay,” Lake says after a moment or two of quiet observation. He gives a slow nod. Eyes still alert and appraising. “Peter, then. Quite frankly, I was hopeful, but I didn’t really expect that you would have changed your perspective in as little as two weeks — not considering the severity of the break you’ve had. The mind is a delicate thing. It requires care, time. But thankfully, we have plenty of both.”

Despite the tone it’s delivered in, there’s something so ominous in that statement that it makes Peter’s skin crawl.

“You can’t just keep me here forever,” he says, unable to smooth out the tremor that has begun to creep into his voice. “I’m going to find a way out. I’m going to figure out what you’re doing.”

Lake’s lips quirk. In amusement or sympathy, Peter can’t tell. “Because you’re Spider-man, is that it?”

Peter glowers.

“You know I am.”

“I know you believe that you are,” Lake says. “But Peter, it’s just not true. Think about it, if it were, wouldn’t there be some proof? So far I’ve seen no evidence of your, ah, _super strength, _or any sticking to walls. Ask yourself, why could that be?”

"Because you're drugging me! You're—"

"Mild sedatives and anti-psychotics,” says Lake. “That’s all. But say you were Spider-man, and by some random chance I had managed to find the exact combination of drugs that would subdue your abilities — why? What would be the purpose behind it?"

"To keep me out of the way. To — to stop me from helping people. To— to—" Peter flounders; he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have an answer to that question, and it is this, perhaps, that scares him more than anything. Because despite knowing his own mind, knowing the truth, he can’t deny that what Doctor Lake is saying holds weight — he’s yet to find any hidden purpose to him being here.

Lake sighs, not with annoyance, but with sympathy. It feels patronising, and irritation sparks bright and hot behind Peter’s sternum, even before the guy speaks.

“You weren’t helping people, Peter.”

The spark flares.

“I _was_,” Peter snaps. “I was—”

“No, Peter, you weren’t. I know you think you were, but your actions put a lot of people in danger. Hurt a lot of people.”

“I never hurt _anyone.”_

“Nobody blames you, of course,” Lake barrels on. “As we’ve already discussed, you weren’t in your right mind, but even so, it’s important that you address your actions, try to understand them. Acknowledging what you did, taking responsibility, it’s important to moving forward. To recovery.”

“And how am I meant to do that when you won’t even tell me what I’m supposed to have done?” Peter spits out. It’s been two weeks of talking in circles and skirting round specifics and listening to vague non-answer after vague non-answer, and he’s had more than enough.

Lake sits up straight at the outburst. Levels Peter with a measured gaze. He seems to think for a moment, and then he clears his throat.

“You built a homemade device and detonated it on the Staten Island ferry. Among other things, that is. Two people died. Another fifty injured. And all so that _Spider-man_ could come to the rescue.”

Peter _recoils_. Like an explosion all of its own, Lake’s revelation leaves his ears ringing in the aftermath. He had known he was in this place because of Spider-man, been told he’s delusional more often than he can count these past two weeks, but this is the first time he’s heard the gritty details, and despite being the one who asked for them, Peter finds himself suddenly wishing he hadn’t. The ferry incident was so long ago now that in the wake of everything that’s happened since, it almost feels like he was a different person, but he remembers how it _really_ went down like it was yesterday, and even knowing everyone was fine—

_no thanks to you_

_—_the memory still fills him with shame. He knows that it very easily _could _have gone a different way. But this…

“That’s not—” His chest has gone tight. He feels cold all over, like ice is sliding under his skin. “That’s not what happened.”

“I’m sorry. It is,” Lake counters solemnly. “But we aren’t here to place blame, Peter, merely to understand and dissect the why. So. Why?”

Peter just stares dumbly. Finally, he manages to shake his head.

“I_ didn’t_. I didn’t… _blow up_…” The thought is so horrifying, he can’t even voice it.

“You contacted Stark Industries beforehand, do you remember? Made sure to catch Tony Stark’s attention. Was that because you were hoping to prove yourself? Looking for an opportunity to show your idol, Iron Man, that you were capable? Did you think perhaps if you could show yourself somehow resolving an incident like that, he might see you — see Spider-man — as worthy of joining the Avengers?”

“_No_, I—” Peter starts, but finds he can’t continue. After all, good intentions aside, isn’t that exactly what he’d been doing when he’d tracked Toomes to that ferry? If he’s truly honest with himself, can he say that his actions that day hadn’t been coloured by pride? Can he say he hadn’t been looking for the chance to be recognised and taken seriously?

He knows he can’t.

“Or is it possible that creating these life-or-death situations was less about giving yourself the opportunity to be the hero, and more about giving yourself the opportunity to ‘save’ lives in a controlled environment?” Lake asks.

Now, Peter’s brows pinch in the middle. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about trying to make up for perceived past wrongs,” Lake says. “This invention of Spider-man — a seemingly invincible hero with super-strength, borderline precognitive senses who looks out for the average Joe — this fixation on Tony Stark — a man with a clouded past who rose above it to seek redemption — where do you think it all comes from?”

Peter doesn’t answer, well and truly lost at this point.

“I think perhaps we need to go right back to the beginning,” Lake says, crossing his legs and resting his hands in his lap. “I’d like to talk about your uncle.”

Understanding hits hard and fast. Peter feels himself go rigid. His chest stabs painfully, and it takes a moment to register it’s because he’s stopped breathing.

“No.”

“Peter, I know that this is a triggering topic for you, but please remember this is a safe space. You’re safe here.”

“I said no.”

Lake’s mouth twists in pity. “Okay, you don’t have to talk, then, just listen. Your uncle’s death was the beginning of all of this — Spider-man, the psychotic break, everything stems from that moment. I understand you feel like it was your fault, but it wasn’t, and I know that you cling to Spider-man as a way to atone for what happened, as a way to punish yourself, ‘saving’ as many people as possible, but Peter, you don’t need to. You don’t need to carry that weight. You were a fourteen year old boy, facing down a gun, and your uncle did what any parent would do when he stepped in front of you. There was nothing you should have done, and there was nothing you _could_ have done to stop what happened.”

By the time Lake finishes, Peter can’t hide his shaking. He can see it all. He can see the two-day-old stubble on the gunman’s face, the hollow eyes and sunken cheeks. He can see the flash of silver. He can see the back of Ben’s leather jacket as he moves to stand between Peter and the muzzle of the gun. He can see the rapidly changing pink to white to grey of his uncle’s face as he lies on the ground, Peter at his side pushing down too hard and not hard enough and screaming for _somebody, anybody _to help.

He closes his eyes. “You don’t know…” _what you’re talking about, _he wants to say, but his throat closes up around the words.

Lake’s voice is gentle.

"What sounds more likely to you?” he goes on. “It's not a trick, I'd genuinely like to know what you think. Is it more likely that you were bitten by a radioactive spider on a field trip, that by some miracle didn't kill you and instead gifted you with fantastical abilities, or that you witnessed something deeply tragic and extremely traumatising — traumatising for anybody, but especially so for a child — and your brain formed this fantastical world as a way to cope?"

Peter doesn't answer. Around the lump in his throat, he can't. He sets his jaw, but a hot tear rolls down his cheek anyway, followed by another, and another. 

"I understand that this is difficult to talk about, Peter, but that's why we are here — to address the difficult, to help you see things clearly. To help you get better."

"I'm not crazy," Peter whispers.

"Of course not, you're simply unwell."

The doctor’s tone is soft, but his words cut like glass.

Peter knows this is the part where he says _I’m not unwell, either, _but the denial gets lost somewhere on the way from his lungs, which are starting to feel like they are withering in his chest, too small. It’s not asthma this time, he’s sure of that much, but that would almost be preferable to the edgeless ache that’s taking over behind his ribs instead.

“You want to go back to your aunt, don’t you?” Lake presses. “You want to get out of here? Well, accepting the truth is the first step in that direction. We’re doing our best to help you Peter, but you have to help yourself, too.”

Peter lets out a shuddering breath. He can feel his chin wobbling, and the image of Doctor Lake ripples in front of him, no matter how rapidly he blinks.

He swallows reflexively, then swallows again. Fixes his blurred gaze somewhere off in the distance. Somewhere far away from this never-ending nightmare. Somewhere else.

“Can I go back to my room?”

“I’d much rather you stayed,” Lake answers, “but if you wish to, then yes, of course.” He goes on to add, “we can pick this up another time," but Peter is already on his feet, heading for the door.

He doesn’t know how he manages to navigate the hallways back to his room, legs shaking as hard as they are and sight watery and wavering, but somehow he does, because the next thing he knows he is planted in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the same four walls of his familiar prison. The book is on the nightstand, the glasses are on the desk.

Peter stands there, vibrating with anger and frustration.

And then he turns and smashes his fist into the wall. Smashes his fist into the wall again and again and again, swallowing down the scream he wants to let loose and never reign in.

It’s the pain makes him stop. It blooms across his knuckles, sharp and hot, and Peter stares at the angry, broken skin of his hand with a kind of curious desperation.

_Please_, he thinks, willing the damage to knit itself back together. _Please_.

Nothing happens. Blood oozes down into the spaces between his fingers, his hand throbs sharply in time with his heart.

He can’t hold back the strangled sob.

“Peter?”

At the soft voice, Peter’s head whips up, despair giving way in an instant to a horror that flushes his body cold. Karen is standing in his doorway. Her eyes flick from his hand, to the blood-smeared wall, to his face with wary concern.

And then her hand drifts toward the radio on her hip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience with this chapter! I hope it doesn't disappoint!
> 
> Please let me know what you think. You can hit me up on tumblr @ [forensicleaf](https://forensicleaf.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mucho love and thanks to [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/pseuds/seekrest) as per for hashing things out with me!

“Karen.”

The name is a ghost of a whisper on Peter’s lips. He takes a step forward — draws up short at the way Karen tenses as he does.

She… she’s afraid of him.

That realisation has him backing up, nausea pooling in his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, uninjured hand raised out in front of him. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I—“

Karen takes a half-step of her own away from him, eyes briefly leaving his to glance down the hallway. Her fingers curl around the radio.

“No!” Peter’s hoarse shout startles the both of them. He sucks in a breath, forces himself to dial it back, though the pressing urgency makes it difficult. “Karen, please don’t. Please, I— I’m calm, look. I promise I’m calm. I’m— Please don’t call anyone. _Please_. Please don’t—”

He’s not calm — far from it. He’s panicking, memories, crippling _fear_ of swirling ceilings and pinned limbs and hazy thoughts tripping his tongue on the same few desperate words over and over as Karen hesitates in the doorway, watching him with a guarded expression. He knows he messed up, knows he’s gone too far. All he’s done is wreck his hand and given them proof of what they’ve been saying all along: that he’s unstable, unpredictable. _Violent_. There’s blood on the wall and on his knuckles, there for all to see, and they aren’t just going to let that go, he knows they aren’t, but god he can’t go through what happened that first day again, he can’t. He _can’t_.

“Karen, please. Please—” He’s shaking. Begging. Any other time and he’d be ashamed, but right now he’s too scared to have that kind of self-awareness. Fear warps his rib cage into a vice, squeezes his words into cut-off gasps. “I’m sorry, I didn’t— I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I—”

It doesn’t matter what he says now, doesn’t matter what he does, and yet he can’t help the pleas tumbling from his lips. He knows what’s coming for him. She’s going to call Croft. _Worse_, she’s going to call Lake, and then Peter will have no choice but to lie there, immobile and pinned — pinned by restraints that still haunt his dreams and pinned by that steady, scrutinizing gaze that feels like it bores straight through his skin. Straight through his bones and into his very core.

She’s going to—

She’s going to—

Except she doesn’t.

“Okay,” she says, taking a few quick steps into the room and pushing the door to behind her instead. “Okay. Peter, hey. Hey. It’s okay.” Her voice drops to a hushed whisper as her head turns between him and the small window at her back. “I’m not going to call anyone, just… try to breathe for me, all right? Sweetheart, can you do that?”

It’s a simple enough request, but the surprise of it has Peter choking on a ragged inhale, exhale coming out in a series of hacking coughs as he tries to catch his breath.

“C’mon, deep breaths, in and out,” Karen coaches, closer now, and closer still as Peter finally manages to somewhat comply. “There you go. You’re all right. No one’s coming, okay? It’s just us here, no one else.”

Peter’s gaze shifts to the door. Someone must have heard— Someone—

“No one else, I promise,” Karen repeats. She ducks her head to draw Peter’s eyes to hers; in them, Peter sees nothing but sincerity and reassurance, and it turns out that’s all it takes for him to deflate completely. The rush of relief is overwhelming, secondary only to the wave of self-pity and shame that comes crashing down over his head immediately after. He nods. Draws in a hitching breath, feeling it judder against his ribs.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, dropping his gaze to the floor.

“Shh, shh, none of that. It’s okay. We’re going to get this all sorted out, don’t worry. Here.”

Karen touches her hand lightly to his back, and he lets himself be led, pliant in the misery that curls around him like a heavy blanket. He feels like he’s floating, barely registering the gentle pressure on his shoulders guiding him to sit, or the softness of the mattress beneath him as he does so without objection.

“There we go,” Karen is saying. “Now you just stay there for me. You sit right there, keep that hand like that — yep, that’s right — and I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”

Does he nod? He isn’t sure, but he must give some kind of confirmation because in the next moment he is alone, sitting on the edge of his bed and cradling his injured hand by the wrist, holding it out and away from the white of his shirt. There’s a smear of red on the wall in front of him, small little splatterings in a trail across the floor, and Peter stares at it all blankly, not really registering that it came from him, from his actions, even though the warm trickle down towards his wrist affirms that it did.

How has this gotten so messed up, he wonders absently. This was supposed to be simple: stick it out until he could escape or until he could reach out for help, but both of those things are feeling further and further away and everything has begun to get complicated, muddled. How had Lake known all of those things about him — things Peter has kept private, never said out loud, even to himself? How had he known exactly which buttons to push? And why is it that there is something so frustratingly familiar about the man that Peter just can’t seem to put his finger on?

He shakes his head. None of it makes any sense. None of this makes any sense. What Lake was saying about him, about what Peter had done — _God, _what he was saying — every word sits wrong and warped in his brain, and yet…

Peter flinches back as the door swings open again, but it’s just Karen returning as promised, cradling a small bundle of supplies in her arms.

“Hey,” she says, making her way over and placing the items on the bad next to him. There’s gauze and antiseptic wipes and—

“Here.”

She holds Peter’s inhaler out toward him. The one he shouldn’t need. He takes it with his uninjured hand — uninjured, but still shaking — and depresses the cylinder on muscle memory alone, drawing two chemical puffs into his lungs. The following breath of air comes easier and much harder at the same time.

“I had to fill out the accident book to account for all this stuff going missing,” Karen is saying as she pulls on a pair of blue latex gloves, crouching down in front of him, “but don’t worry, all right? If anyone asks, you tripped. Scratched your hand on the way down.”

Peter blinks at her, feeling like he’s seeing her properly for the first time. Dimly, there’s a flicker of suspicion, a curiosity as to why she would be willing to potentially risk her job to cover for him like this, because she must be, but he’s too stunned to properly address it — too grateful to look the gift horse in the mouth, and too tired from the emotional whiplash of the last ten minutes to do anything other than sit and stare blankly as Karen takes his hand, twisting it gently and inspecting the damage with a light tut.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says.

Peter doesn’t say anything.

He dutifully curls and flexes his hand when Karen instructs him to. It hurts, though only on the surface where the skin pulls over his knuckles, confirming to Karen — and to Peter, who has had more than his fair share of experience in this regard — that despite the blood and the pain and the shadow that promises to grow into an impressive strip of bruising come morning, no bones are broken.

_Lucky_, he thinks.

He doesn’t feel it.

The antiseptic stings where it touches the torn skin, but Peter doesn’t make a noise. Just sits there, falling further and further into himself as Karen disinfects and wraps the mess that is his hand. He feels numb, like he’s hollowed out. Void. He doesn’t know if it’s the drugs, or the adrenaline crash, or the sheer oppressive hopelessness of this place, but either way, he can’t bring himself to care — all roads lead to the same destination, and that destination is here: locked in a body that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, in a locked room, in a locked ward, so far away from his friends and family that he might as well be on the other side of the world instead of within view of the unmistakable skyline that has served as the backdrop for his entire life.

He thinks about being there, being _home_, scarfing down some take-out or another on the ratty old sofa they hate, but keep because Ben bought it, smoke and the smell of May’s most recent failed culinary attempt venting out of the open windows. He thinks about being upstate, with an excitable five year old wrapped around his legs and begging him to play hide and seek, even though they both know there’s very little hiding or seeking involved — she always goes straight for the garage. He thinks about being in the lab at the penthouse, having a worn, oiled rag thrown at his head for being _a smartass, Parker. Sassing a guy with one arm? I thought you were better than that._

The longing for it all is so strong it’s a physical ache, far more painful than anything his hand has to offer: in this place Peter is watched almost every hour of the day, he’s surrounded by people, barely has a moment to himself, and yet he doesn’t think he’s ever felt so deeply, deeply alone. He’s alone in mourning the loss of the abilities and senses that made him so much more than he is, he’s alone with his memories of an entire universe rebuilt from dust and grief and pain — because it seems Thanos never happened here, either — and he’s alone in his increasingly desperate quest to dismantle the reality being thrust in his face at every turn, one where he is mentally ill. Where he is dangerous. Where he is a _murderer_.

It’s not true.

He knows it isn’t true.

It _can’t_ be true.

But… where _are_ his powers? Why _is _he here? What do they want with him?

And deep down, another question, more pressing than all the others — one he has routinely avoided for fear of the answer. He’s made a multitude of excuses and thought of a million plausible explanations, told himself it shouldn’t matter, because Spider-man should be able to get himself out of this mess, shouldn’t have to wait around to be rescued — Tony didn’t in Afghanistan — but now, in a moment of weakness, he finds himself asking:

Why hasn’t anybody come for him?

It takes Karen holding out a tissue for Peter to realise that he’s crying. Nothing loud, no sobs, just twin tracks trailing silently down towards his chin.

He looks at the tissue. Past it, at Karen, and her deeply sympathetic eyes.

“I’m not crazy,” he whispers, voice cracking on the sharp edges of the word.

Karen doesn’t say anything, just rises to take a tentative seat on the bed beside him. She takes his uninjured hand between her own, soft and warm where his is cold, and — like that first day — she stays.

* * *

** **

In keeping with protocol, when Peter turns up to breakfast with his head down and his hand in a swath of white gauze, no one asks. Even Dai is strangely lacking in his usual taunts as Peter picks up a tray and makes his way to stand behind Robbie at the counter, waiting to be served.

He’s not hungry — quite the opposite, in fact — but he knows refusing to eat doesn’t fly here, in quite the same way refusing to take the meds doesn’t fly here either, so he makes a show of collecting his oatmeal like a good patient: after what happened yesterday, he doesn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than necessary.

Scratch that. He doesn’t want to draw any attention to himself at all.

There’s a roiling queasiness in his gut as he glances up and around the room, eyes scanning the faces dotted throughout it. He can see Martinez through the Perspex window of the cubicle where they keep the meds, measuring out the morning’s pills; Sarah, who Peter is pretty sure is new given her skittishness and the fact he hadn’t seen her for his first week here, is patiently trying to coax Laura into eating a few more mouthfuls of oatmeal; Carl is around here somewhere, Peter knows, because he’s the one who had the task of rounding up the stragglers this morning, drawing Peter out from under his pile of blankets with a gruff, though not unkind, _c’mon, get your ass to breakfast, pal. _The one person Peter doesn’t see however, is Karen, and for that he is immeasurably thankful: whatever comfort or reassurance he’d taken from her presence yesterday has curdled overnight into something hard and bitter, and Peter finds he can’t bear the thought of facing her today, if ever again.

He’s angry — not at her, though, at himself, for not seeing that Lake had been goading him. Or for seeing it and allowing it to happen anyway. He’s angry for allowing himself to be led to that kind of a reaction, and angry for having to throw himself at Karen’s mercy in the aftermath — but more than that, he’s embarrassed. He’s ashamed.

Isn’t he Spider-man? Isn’t he meant to be stronger than this?

The woman behind the counter places a bowl of oatmeal on his tray. It’s topped with banana, the slices arranged like a floating smiley face. Peter just looks at it for a moment, watching the pieces drift out of shape before mumbling his thanks and turning to take a seat at the table. Dai is at one end with Sarah and Laura, Robbie and Janine at the other. Peter would rather not have to sit in the vicinity of any of them, but there’s an obvious choice here: he puts his tray down opposite Janine.

Robbie, sitting two seats down, doesn’t look up from his own bowl as Peter pulls in his chair, content to keep himself to himself, but Peter can feel Janine’s eyes boring a hole through the top of his bowed head. He ignores this, choosing to place his focus instead on the awkward task of lifting his spoon and trying to eat with his left hand. His right rests on his lap under the table, out of sight.

After a few moments, the prickling sensation that tells him he’s being watched subsides, but he becomes overly aware instead of how Janine is now staring at her own bowl of half-eaten oatmeal, absently twirling her spoon through it in a lazy figure eight. Her brow furrows. Peter swallows his mouthful, feeling like he’s choking down glue.

“Peter,” Janine says.

Peter drags his gaze up.

Janine’s mouth is twisted slightly to the side, her eyes searching his face. Peter isn’t sure exactly what she’s looking for, and he’s not sure what she sees, but the crease between her brows deepens as the moment stretches on. She takes a short intake of breath, like she’s about to say something—

_(I wanted to see if you were okay.)_

_(Of course I care, you’re my friend.)_

—but then she shakes her head, expression smoothing out, and the moment is gone.

“Never mind.”

She drops her eyes back to her oatmeal. Peter does the same. He looks straight through it, whatever semblance of appetite he had now definitively lost.

_Sorry._

It would be easy enough to say it. He _should_ say it, if for nothing else than to have someone, _anyone_ to talk to. But then he thinks of the raw edges he exposed to Karen yesterday and of the shame of it all now that the mist of grief and frustration has dissipated somewhat.

He keeps his mouth shut.

“Good morning, campers.” Anil’s chipper voice cuts through the weighty silence that has descended on their end of the table as he pulls out a seat and plonks himself down one space over from Janine. If he notices the strained atmosphere he’s interrupting, he doesn’t draw any attention to it. “How’re we doing?”

Peter glances at Janine. Her face looks as drawn as Peter’s feels, but at the question she pulls herself up, plastering a halfway-convincing smile on her face.

“Good,” she says, almost sounding like she means it. She nods her head towards the bowl of oatmeal cradled in one of Anil’s hands, the spoon in the other. “Slumming it with the inmates today, Anil?”

Anil shrugs, dropping the bowl onto the table. “I didn’t get breakfast before my shift and this was going spare. And hey, what are you talking about, slumming? This here’s five-star cuisine.” He illustrates his point by taking a large spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth, only to grimace.

“Five-star, huh?” Janine asks, and now her smile is genuine.

“Well, it sure isn’t the paratha I could’ve been eating, but it could be worse.”

“Oh man, Priya made paratha again? How come you never bring any to share?”

“Well, ‘cause then there’d be less for me when I get home.”

Janine rolls her eyes at Anil’s grin. “Ugh. Selfish,” she says. “I’d kill for something with a bit of flavour. Everything here is so…” She spoons up some of her oatmeal, lets it _plop_ back down into the bowl. “…_beige_.”

Peter, whose eyes have fallen back to his own bowl, can’t disagree. The food here might not be awful, and it’s definitely far from the worst thing Newhaven has to offer, but it _is _boring.

“Oatmeal’s good for you,” says Anil, but at Janine’s answering scoff, he continues, “Okay, what are you having instead, then? One thing from outside, anything you want — lay it on me.”

_Delmar’s number five, extra pickles, squished down real flat, _Peter thinks, then immediately finds himself wishing he hadn’t as the sense memory of the taste mingles with the residual one of oatmeal in his mouth. His stomach twists. He drops his spoon.

“Egg McMuffin,” Janine says after a few seconds of contemplation. “No, no, wait. My abuela’s chilaquiles — has to be.”

Anil nods thoughtfully, chewing around another bite of bananary oatmeal. “Home comforts,” he says after swallowing. “I can respect that.”

That there aren’t too many of them around here goes unspoken, though it’s obvious they’re all thinking it. How could they not be? A hush falls over the table, and then—

“Chilli Doritos,” Robbie pipes up quietly from Peter’s left.

Anil clears his throat, looking grateful for the rescue. He points a finger at him. “Also a good choice, man.”

“Wait, we’re not sticking to breakfast stuff?” Janine asks. “Well then, raise you a spoonful of peanut butter, straight out of the jar.”

“Lame.” is Dai’s contribution from the other end of the table. There’s a pause, and then he adds begrudgingly, “Pizza.”

Janine huffs a laugh. “_Dollar _pizza.”

“Chocolate milk?” Robbie offers, sitting a little straighter in his chair now. Peter slouches further down into his own, swallowing thickly as the conversation continues around him.

“Butter popcorn,” says Janine.

“Fries.”

“Reese’s cups.”

“M&Ms.”

“But _only_ the peanut ones.”

“What’s with you and the peanuts, huh?”

“This is _America_, Anil.”

On and on it goes, Peter’s stomach twisting more and more as the list lengthens and the laughter rises until he just can’t stand to listen to it for one second longer.

He gets to his feet abruptly, the squeak of chair legs across the tiles drawing a bold line under the conversation. The voices around him cease. He realises everyone is now looking at him, realises he’s doing exactly what he didn’t want to do — bringing attention to himself — but he can’t sit here and listen to this anymore, can’t sit and listen to the canned laughter and the light jabs and the pretence of happiness, like all of this is normal, like being here isn’t the most fucked up thing to ever happen to him, to any of them.

“Excuse me,” he mumbles through clenched teeth, because he feels like he has to now, and then he turns for the door.

He drops his half-eaten breakfast on the clear-away cart by the counter, head down and back burning with the eyes that follow him. When he leaves, he’s thankful that, for once, no one tries to stop him.

* * *

Peter’s right hand is throbbing by the time he makes it back to his room, the palm of his left stinging with the little half-moon imprints dug in by his fingernails. It isn’t until he finds himself in the relative privacy of his suite that he realises the both of them have been clenched tight into fists since he left the cafeteria, perhaps even before then.

Loosening them now elicits a sharp hiss drawn in through equally-clenched teeth. Peter can feel the raw skin of his knuckles dragging against the gauze as he flexes his hand, and he gently peels at the edges of the wrapping to inspect the damage. He expects to see bleeding, and there is a little, but it doesn’t look half as bad as he’d thought it would today. It even looks like some of the scrapes are beginning to dry up, on the way to scabbing over, though nowhere near as fast as he’s become accustomed to. Exposure to air would probably help the healing along, but a fresh look reaffirms what he already knew — the damage is very clearly from punching something, and very clearly _not_ from tripping and scraping like he was told to say if asked. He doesn’t think it would be a good idea for anyone to see it.

A light rap on the main door has him hurriedly pulling the bandage back into place, another aborted hiss making its way past his lips as he does. He manages to school his expression just in time for Martinez to stick his head through the gap between the door and the frame.

Seeing Peter, he smiles.

“Peter, hey. There you are,” he says, pushing the door open to step in into the room. “You left in a bit of a hurry back there. Everything okay?”

His eyes trail down towards Peter’s hands, where the bandaged one is cupped behind the other in a hasty attempt to obscure it from view. An unsuccessful one, it seems. Peter resists the urge to move them both to behind his back.

He swallows.

“I tripped.”

Martinez’ smile doesn’t waver, but his expression does turn a little bemused. “Uh, yeah, I know. I saw on the handover. Bad luck, man.” He nods towards Peter’s hand. “Is it bothering you? Do you need me to take a look?”

He doesn’t seem suspicious — his enquiry seems nothing short of earnest concern — which means Karen probably hadn’t been lying when she told Peter she’d reported what happened yesterday as an accident, rather than the emotional outburst that it was. It means she’d kept his secret, like she promised she would. Peter doesn’t know what to do with that, but he does know that he feels some of the hardness he has begun to harbour towards her ebb. In its place, a flicker of guilt that it was there at all.

“No,” he answers on a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding tight. “I umm…. No. Thank you. Karen looked at it yesterday.”

“You sure?” Martinez asks. “It’s no trouble.”

“I’m sure.”

Martinez eyes him a moment longer, just to confirm, and then he acquiesces. “Okay,” he says. “Well then, sorry to be the bearer of bad gifts, but—” he holds his hands up, and Peter feels himself sag a little now that he sees what’s in them, even though he shouldn’t be surprised. “You left breakfast before we got around to dishing them out. You know the rules, buddy.”

Yes. He does.

He takes the proffered pot, tosses the pills in it back, and follows them with a chaser shot of the water Martinez passes to him next. Sometimes, if it’s Carl bringing round the meds, Peter has to open his mouth to show him that he actually swallowed them, but Martinez is pretty relaxed, so when Peter simply says, “All gone,” without sounding like he’s slurring around two tongued tablets, and with only a hint of petulance, the man just nods.

“Pleasure doing business,” he says.

Peter can’t say the same, but what he does say is, “Martinez,” as the man makes to leave.

Martinez stops, hand curled around the door frame. “Yeah, what’s up?” he asks, looking like he genuinely cares about the answer.

“Is um… is Karen working today?”

He’s not sure why he asks. Maybe it’s for the same kind of reason soldiers and spies pick tables in restaurants where they can have their back to the wall: so they can have a clear view of anything that might be coming for them. Peter tells himself it’s that, anyway — it’s easier than admitting that Karen was kind to him, that she took care of him, and that after weeks of being here, maybe he misses being cared for.

“She’s on the late shift, I’m pretty sure. Should be in around three. You want me to tell her to come find you when she starts?”

Peter shakes his head. “No,” he says a little too quickly. “No it’s — I’ll find her. Thanks.”

Martinez gives him a cheerful one-fingered salute. “No worries,” he says, and then he disappears back down the hall, leaving Peter alone with his twinging hand, conflicted thoughts, and the familiar creeping hold of another round of medication.

* * *

Karen is in at three, just like Martinez said.

She’s already there in the rec room when Peter makes his way down for social hour, talking quietly in the corner with the new starter, Sarah, who is listening to everything she says with wide eyes and rapt attention. Peter ducks his head when she turns hers to look at him, feeling heat crawl up his neck as he quickly crams himself into the corner of the sofa. He wonders how long it’ll be before she comes over to talk about what went down yesterday, wonders how long he can get away with just avoiding her gaze and pretending like nothing ever happened.

As it turns out, it’s quite a long time.

Karen doesn’t approach him. In fact, she leaves Peter be for the entirety of the session but to ask if he wants to join in while the rest of them — Dai surprisingly included for once — play The Game of Life. He declines politely, and that’s the end of that.

He realises eventually that Karen is waiting for him to come to her, that despite the glances of soft concern she casts his way when she thinks he isn’t looking, she’s allowing him the space to broach the distance when he’s ready. It makes him feel even worse for thinking badly of her. It doesn’t make him move from his seat.

At the end of social hour, when he finally climbs off the sofa and heads back towards his room, he thinks he sees a flicker of disappointment cross her face, and the image of it follows him all the way to his door.

One foot over the threshold, he stops.

He thinks.

And then he turns around.

“Did you forget something?” asks Sarah when he makes it back to the rec room. She’s sitting beside Laura, trying to get her to take her medication now that the room is quieter.

Peter hesitates. “Um.”

“You looking for Karen?” Martinez, who is wiping down one of the tables asks. He looks up, eyebrow raised knowingly. “She’s down on desk duty.”

“Right. Um, thanks,” Peter says, backing out of the room and heading that way.

His stomach rebels slightly, as his feet pull him towards the desk, but he decides he can’t just go and hide in his room any longer. He’s beginning to realise that by isolating himself all he’s doing is… well, isolating himself. If he’s going to survive in here long enough to get out then he’s going to need people on his side, people he can count on.

He’s not stupid, he’s well-aware that Karen’s kindness could just be another layer of this whole deception, but for some reason, it doesn’t really feel that way. It feels like her worry for him was genuine, like she really did put concern for his wellbeing above concern for her job. Like she cared. Even if it was all just a show — and of that, Peter isn’t sure anymore — one thing he is sure of is that it isn’t going to do him any good to get on her bad side.

He rounds the corner at the end of the hall, and just as expected, there Karen is behind the desk. She looks up when he approaches. “Peter,” she says, looking slightly surprised before her face softens, “everything all right?”

Her eyes drift momentarily downwards before focusing on his face, and Peter resists his knee-jerk reaction, which is to hide his bandaged hand from view. There’s no point, not with her — she’s already seen what’s underneath.

He swallows.

“Um… yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Actually, that’s why I’m here…”

He pauses, purpose dwindling away now that he actually has to act on it. He feels suddenly self-conscious.

In the silence, Karen’s brow crinkles. She’s waiting — patiently, but not in the demanding way Peter feels like Lake does. More in a way that tells him if he turned around and walked back to his room right now, she’d let him go and say nothing more of it. He takes a breath.

“I wanted to… uh. About yesterday… I wanted to say, um—”

He’s startled out of finishing his sentence by a shrill cry, echoing down the halls and coming from the direction of the rec room.

It’s Laura, in an instant he knows it is, but he’s never heard her screaming quite like this. It’s chilling, desperate, haunted, and on pure instinct he takes a half-step toward the sound before he realises: what is _he_ going to do? He isn’t in any position to help anyone. Not here. He can't even help himself.

“Karen,” comes a crackly squawk through the radio. “S—Sarah to Karen.”

Karen, whose face has gone pale but alert, unclips the radio from her belt, holds it up to speak. “Go ahead.”

Sarah’s voice bounces back immediately. “—orry, I just— she started screaming and scratching and the only one here is Martinez and I know he’s not allowed to help so I’m by myself and I don’t— I don’t know what to do.”

“Shoot,” Karen murmurs to herself. She chews her lip, but to her credit, she’s quick to jump into action. “Okay,” she says, again to herself, making her way around the desk. She presses the talk button on the radio. “Okay, I’m on my way, sweetheart. Try not to crowd her, all right? Martinez, you’re on radio, yeah? Can you get Croft — or Lake, if he hasn’t left yet?”

As the affirmative comes back through the radio, to Peter, Karen adds a quick, “I’m so sorry, hon, I’ll be right back.” And then he is left staring after her as she hurries down the hallway and out of sight.

He stands in her wake, a little stunned.

“Okay,” he murmurs, letting the word drift out to be swallowed up by the sound of dull shrieks. He shuffles from foot to foot, wondering how long he should wait before just heading back to his room. He watches the second hand _tick-tick-tick_ around the face of the large roman-numeral clock that hangs on the wall behind the desk—

And freezes.

The _unmanned _desk.

For a moment that feels like an eternity Peter doesn’t dare move — Karen said she’d be right back, after all. But the consistent sound of screams echoing through the halls indicates that she won’t be, at least for a good few minutes. Peter strains his ears over the suddenly-rapid thudding of his pulse, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps, thinking Karen must have sent someone to take over her post here — Martinez, maybe? — but the hallway remains quiet; Karen doesn’t return, nor does anyone else round the corner to take her place.

Peter really is alone.

Realisation ignites action: heart slamming in his throat, he reaches over and snatches the phone from its cradle, fumbling it in his over-eager hands. In his haste, his elbow catches the little wire pen pot sitting on the ledge of the desk and sends it flying.

“_Shit_.”

A wave of pens goes spilling over the surface, rolling like a swell towards the edge, and the phone goes clattering down too as Peter dives forward to catch them, by some miracle managing to do so before anything can make it to the floor.

“Shit. Shit.”

He scoops everything up quickly, shoving the pens back into the pot with shaking hands, eyes darting up and down and up and down towards the end of the hallway, and brain tripping on curses and prayers like a broken record.

No one comes. No one heard. No one’s coming. He takes a breath. Takes the phone again.

His grip on the receiver is white-knuckled. He can feel his pulse in his fingertips as he leans over the raised lip of the desk. The little pink sticky note taped above the number pad on the console that Peter has to squint to read reminds users to _press nine for external calls :) _

Despite the urgency, Peter can’t help but hesitate.

Is he… Is he really doing this?

If he gets caught…

He presses nine.

There is nothing he wants more than to hear May’s voice, but now that he’s actually standing here, receiver pressed hard to his ear, Peter finds himself dialling not her number, but someone else’s, the only other one he knows by heart. His trembling fingers fly over the buttons, inputting digits that he committed to memory so long ago now — committed to memory just in case anything was to happen to his phone, or to his suit, or to the numerous notebooks he’d scribbled the number into in code as back-ups.

It starts to ring. Peter waits with baited breath, twitching and glancing over his shoulder with every tiny noise that echoes down the corridor, terrified that he’s lost precious time to his clumsiness, terrified that he’s going to get caught before he’s had a chance for the call to connect.

_Come on, come on._

There’s a click on the line, then —

_“You have reached the voice mailbox of Happy Hogan.”_

Peter’s heart sinks, but he forces himself past the initial flash of disappointment, because the important thing is that the number _worked_. The number is real. How would he know that number if he imagined the whole thing?

There’s a beep.

“Happy!” Peter’s voice is a frantic whisper. “Happy, it’s me — it’s Peter. You gotta help me, man. You gotta, you gotta tell Mr Stark. I’m in – they’ve got me in this hospital, Newhaven. Newhaven Psychiatric. And I don’t know why but they’re drugging me and trying to make me think I’m delusional and that I imagined Spider-man, and Thanos, and knowing you and Mr Stark, and— and they’re saying“ — here Peter has to take a steadying breath — “Happy, they’re saying that the ferry was all my fault. They’re saying it was me that blew it up and I just… I don’t know why. I don’t know what they want, and I can’t — they’ve done something to me. I don’t have my powers and I can’t— I can’t get out. I’m sorry. I need— _please…_ I need help.”

He doesn’t realise until he says it out loud just how desperately he means it.

“Please help me,” he says again. “Please. Please get me out of here. Please, just—“

He cuts himself off, because he’s aware enough to realise that he’s beginning to work himself into a panic, and he doesn’t want Happy to hear that, even if it’s how he’s feeling. In the brief pause that follows where he does his best to collect himself, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, he becomes aware of something else, too.

The screaming has stopped.

The panic he’d been trying to quash returns tenfold — how long since Laura had gone quiet? How long has he been talking, risking an orderly rounding the corner and catching him red-handed? He’s out of time.

“I have to go,” he whispers into the receiver. “I’m sorry, I—“

His head whips round, eyes going to the end of the hallway. Are those footsteps he can hear, or is it just the rapid pounding of his own heart in his ears?

_Out of time. Out of time_.

“Please, Happy,” he says one last time, “help.” And then regretfully, harder than forcing himself to choke down pills, harder than lifting a mountain of concrete off his back, feeling like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, he hangs up the phone.

No more than a minute later when Karen rounds the corner looking flustered and strained, Peter is still trying to calm his breathing, still trying to steady his trembling hands, his trembling everything. He isn’t shaking because of fear though, he realises — not now. No, for the first time since he got here, the adrenaline thundering through his blood is borne of something else. It feels a little like elation, like anticipation, breathing life back into his overly-medicated body, because now, finally, _finally_, he has paved the way to getting out of this place, because now he has finally confirmed what he knew all along: that this whole thing is a trick, a fabrication.

So when Karen makes her way behind the desk and there’s a _crunch _beneath her foot_, _when she bends down and stands back up with a pink pen topped by pink fluff in her hand, looking quizzically at it, at the pen pot, and then at Peter, Peter barely flinches.

_My name is Peter Parker_, he thinks. Feels the conviction of it deep in his bones. _I am Spider-man. This isn’t real._

Now it’s just a waiting game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter and not as long of a wait this time. I hope you liked it!
> 
> Please leave your thoughts! I love to see them! Or feel free to hit me up on tumblr under the same username: forensicleaf


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as usual to seekrest for reading this through and reassuring me. I appreciate you so much!

There’s a spider on the ceiling.

It’s a tiny one, no bigger than a penny — small enough, in fact, that from his position sprawled on his back on his bed, Peter can’t make out more than the vague shape of the thing. But he knows what it is. It’s been crawling in haphazard lines above him for a while now, falling still every now and then before once again resuming its slow trek to what seems like nowhere.

“You seem lost, Charlotte,” Peter says quietly, looking up at the black dot currently edging its way along the light fixture. He doesn’t know if it’s a girl spider or a boy spider, but he’s decided he’s going to call it Charlotte anyway. It seems like as good a spider-themed name as any.

Unsurprisingly, the spider doesn’t reply, but it does pause for a moment, likely able to feel the warmth of the bulb through the plastic cover it has now started to traverse.

“It’s okay if you are,” Peter goes on. “I think maybe I’m a little lost, too.”

After a minute or two of thinking about it, Charlotte starts to move again. Peter watches as she heads back the way she came in a loose S shape, her steps tentative and careful, before slipping into a crack at the edge of a ceiling panel and disappearing from view. He stares at the spot where she vanished for a long time afterwards, waiting, but she doesn’t return. He keeps staring, anyway. It’s not like he has anything else to do.

It has now been two days since his phone call.

Peter had spent that first night filled with a nervous, hopeful anticipation, wondering if every minute that passed might be the one where Tony would come crashing through the ceiling in full Iron Man get up, or where a portal might open up in front of him like on Titan, enabling him to simply step out of this nightmare and back into his real life.

He’d wondered how long after that he would start to feel like himself again, how long it would be until his vision cleared up and his senses returned, how long until his hands started sticking like they were supposed to again. But then, when the night had become morning, followed by the inevitable shift into the afternoon, and then evening, he’d found that hope starting to slide.

Denial: he’s sure that’s what Doctor Lake would call it if Peter hadn’t adamantly refused to speak about the call — about who it was to, what it was about.

Karen had covered for him with his hand, yes, but Peter couldn’t have expected the same with the phone call: he’d seen the disappointment on her face when she put together what he had done — more than that, he’d seen the betrayal. So even though she had remained kind with him, even though she’d told him she wasn’t mad, when he’d found himself summoned to Lake’s office after dinner that evening he hadn’t been surprised. Nervous, yes — worried even — but not surprised.

He’d resolutely kept his mouth shut as Lake pressed him for an explanation and talked forlornly about set-backs, kept his mouth shut even as the hours ticked on by with no sign of the cavalry — even as those hours turned into days.

_Maybe they’re just waiting for the right time, _he’d found himself thinking, _Maybe Happy didn’t get the message yet. Maybe, maybe…_

But even as he’d clung to the excuses like the only lifeline keeping his head above water, deep down in some hollow, hopeless part of himself, he’d known: if Mr Stark, Happy, _anyone_ was looking for him, they would have come by now. He would already be home.

As the sun begins to cast its rays across the wall at the foot of his bed on the morning of second day, Peter finds himself overcome by a sort of grim acceptance.

No one is coming.

Either they just don’t care and they’ve left him here, or—

_Or it really is just all in your head_.

The voice is a malicious whisper in the back of Peter’s mind, one he hasn’t entertained until now because to do so would be to entertain the possibility that it might be _right_. It would force him to confront what he is most afraid of: that this — the hospital and everything it represents — is the truth, and that his memories — all of them so intimately vivid and present and _real _to him — are the lie.

The thought that he really might have fabricated the events of the last two years, that his brain could have conjured up such amazing, but also terrible things is too much to bear. It’s too much to think that he never got bitten by that spider at Oscorp, too much to think that he never became anything special, or that he never got to know Mr Stark, or fight beside the Avengers, and it’s too much to think that in place of all that, he’d become someone who hurt innocent people.

It’s also more than too much to think that if he really has been in a locked ward at Newhaven for two years, then May has spent those two years completely and utterly alone.

So, Peter doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think about any of it. Instead, he counts the ceiling panels, he watches the sun cast shadows on the walls, and, despite everything, he tries to feel some hope.

“My name is Peter Parker,” he whispers. “I’m Spider-man. This isn’t real.”

For the first time, the words don’t bring him any comfort.

* * *

It’s Julie who comes to make sure that he’s awake an hour or so later, which is the only indication Peter has that it must now be the weekend.

It’s not like that means anything to him, of course, other than telling him how long he’s been here: the days of the week have all begun to blur into one at this point, the cyclicality of daily routine meaning there is very little difference between a Monday morning and a Saturday one. Not for Peter, anyway, whose pattern is never broken up by visitors or the very-occasional day release like it is for the others — only by sessions with Doctor Lake, and those, he would rather go without.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Julie says, apparently oblivious to the fact that Peter has already been awake for hours. He isn’t sure how that could be — he’s caught his distorted reflection in the chrome of the bathroom faucet a handful of times over the past days, seen the dark smudges under his eyes and the slightly ashen quality to his skin. But then again, perhaps Julie’s penchant for false cheer means she sees all of those things and just chooses to ignore them. Perhaps it makes her job easier. Perhaps it makes her life easier.

Reluctantly, Peter pulls his eyes away from the ceiling. He rolls his face towards the door, towards Julie, who is standing just past the threshold with her hair pulled tight back into her signature bun, hands on her hips and a bright smile on her face.

“Up and at ‘em,” she says. “Come on, I heard it’s pancakes today.”

Peter doesn’t really see any use in arguing.

He gets up.

* * *

Breakfast is a somewhat uncomfortable affair, as it has been for the past two mornings. Since Peter’s escapades the other day, there have been added restrictions on phone use for all of the residents, and no one is allowed to make unsupervised calls any more. The enforcement of this has left him on the receiving end of a frosty, low-level resentment from Janine and Robbie, and borderline open hostility from Dai. Laura, who doesn’t seem to want to call anybody anyway, remains unchanged in her behaviour towards him, which, Peter has to admit, isn’t saying very much.

At least the pancakes that were promised look happy to see him: two strawberries for eyes sit atop the stack, with a curved line of carefully-placed blueberries forming the mouth below.

Peter carves through the face with the edge of his fork.

He’s back to using his right hand now, the stiffness in it having eased off over the past day or so and the bandage coming off to reveal only several small scabs across his knuckles. It makes it a little easier for Peter to shovel the food into his mouth quickly this morning, trying his best to minimise the time he has to sit and pretend not to notice the glares Dai is sending his way from the other end of the table.

Peter has never even seen the other boy use the phone — didn’t get the impression he had any interest in conversations that involved more than a handful of spitefully-thrown words — so he doesn’t completely understand the animosity. But maybe it isn’t really about the phone; maybe Dai just needs an excuse.

Five minutes later, when a well-timed foot hooked around Peter’s ankle on his way to the clear away cart sends him crashing to the floor, that only becomes more evident.

Peter’s tray goes skidding away. The cutlery bounces across the tile, making an awful clattering sound, and the dribble of orange juice left in his cup somehow ends up all over his t-shirt. He doesn’t see where the plate goes, but he can hear the noise of it spinning lower and lower on its rim before wobbling flat against the ground.

“Oh my… what happened?” Julie asks, dropping the tray she is carrying and rushing over as Peter, face burning and half-healed hand throbbing where it had broken his fall, pushes himself up to his knees. “Are you okay?”

A firm but gentle hand around his bicep helps him stand, and he fights against the angry instinctive urge to throw it off.

“Fine,” he says stiffly. He throws a dirty glance towards Dai, who for the first time this morning is deliberately not looking at him. Robbie and Janine’s eyes are averted, also, but they at least have the decency to appear uncomfortable with the turn of events. “I just tripped.”

Julie is no fool, though. Her eyes follow his line of sight and he can see her putting two and two together in her head.

“That’s the second time this week, hon,” she says carefully. Her tone says, _you can tell me, _but her face says she’d be grateful to not have to deal with it.

“I tripped,” Peter repeats. He doesn’t want to have to deal with it either. With any luck, he won’t have to for much longer. Let Dai have the win; it won’t mean a thing to Peter if — _when_ he gets out of here.

He hears Julie sigh gratefully next to him, but he can’t deal with seeing the relief he knows is on her face. He looks down at the floor, and at the assortment of items scattered across it instead.

With a step forward, he starts to bend, reaching towards the escaped knife.

“Oh no, hon. No, no. I’ll take care of all that, don’t worry,” Julie tells him quickly, halting his progress with a light hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you go and see Carl for your shower things, hmm? Get yourself all cleaned up, get some fresh clothes. Visitors should be arriving in an hour or so.”

Now, Peter does look at her, his expression blank in confusion. He doesn’t know what difference people arriving in an hour makes to him — he doesn’t have any visitors, and if Mr Stark was going to stage a rescue, Peter is pretty sure it wouldn’t be via the Friends and Family sign-in book at the front desk. Still, a hot shower — even one with limited supplies and arm-length supervision, lest he try to harm himself with a sample-sized bottle of shampoo or the two inch-deep tray at the bottom of the cubicle — doesn’t sound like the worst idea, especially now that he’s covered in slowly-drying orange juice.

He nods, and shuffles towards the door.

The morning meds are sitting directly in his path, lined up and ready for distribution on the hastily-abandoned tray Julie had been carrying when he had ‘tripped’_. _Peter could just walk straight past them, and he’s of half a mind to, but he can see Julie watching him out of the corner of his eye, and he knows someone would just come and make him take them later anyway — what would be the point?

_Only for a little while longer, _he tells himself, before he takes the pot labelled _Parker, P._, and throws the pills down dry.

“Peter,” calls Julie behind him afterwards when he goes to walk away. He stops. Turns. “You sure you’re okay?”

For a moment, Peter lets the gentle tone of her voice and the concern in her face wash over him. And then he realises what she’s really asking from him.

“I’m fine,” he says, deliberately over-enunciating the words so she can see what she’s looking for, and trying not to let the sting of hurt sink deeper than his skin.

Julie smiles and nods, satisfied. “Get on, then.”

Peter is more than happy to comply, doing as she suggests and heading down to the desk to speak to Carl, who doesn’t look particularly happy about being pulled away from whatever conversation he and Davis had been engaged in, but then, when does he ever look particularly happy about anything?

Regardless of attitude, though, he dutifully takes Peter to collect his shower supplies, and then he stands sentry outside the door while Peter takes what is arguably, despite intention, one of the shortest and least-relaxing showers of his life: three weeks of the same routine has done nothing to lessen the discomfort that comes with knowing he could be walked in on at any moment.

Not that Carl seems intent on that in the slightest. When Peter emerges from the bathroom in a clean white tee and pair of grey sweatpants a few hurried minutes later, hair still damp, The man has taken up residence at the desk and is flicking through that old, worn copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. He glances up, looking almost bored.

“All done, pal?” he asks, closing the book and laying it back on the desk.

Peter nods.

“Great.” Carl stands, stretching. “Catch you in a few, then.” And with that, he leaves.

Peter doesn’t really know what to do with himself after that. He towels off his hair, and then he hovers by the window for a bit, letting the sun dry out the rest of it. It’s only so long before he starts to get tired from standing, though, so he moves to the bed to ride out the lethargy, which — while much more manageable now — still kicks in with every dose of medication.

He considers picking up that copy of To Kill a Mockingbird himself, as he has a few times now, but the font is too small for him to comfortably read without using the glasses that are currently gathering dust on the nightstand. He refuses to even touch those again, let alone put them on his face, so he tries to run through the story from memory, doing his best to entertain himself by playing it out like a movie in his head — only Atticus’ face keeps blurring with his memory of Ben’s, Scout’s with Morgan’s, and after a while his heart weighs too heavy to endure it any longer.

He lies back on the bed and scans the ceiling instead, looking to see if Charlotte has made a reappearance.

He’s still doing that when Davis raps on the door, pushing it open wide as he continues to knock. The man frowns when he sees Peter, sprawled out on the bed.

“What are you doing in here still? Thought Julie told you it’s visiting hour.”

Peter rises up to his elbows. “Yeah,” he says. “So?”

“So, you got a visitor.”

Peter blinks at him. “What?”

“A visitor, man. You know, someone who comes to see you?”

When Peter just continues to stare, struggling to comprehend, Davis scoffs. He beckons Peter to follow him as he backs out of the doorway, and, curious now, Peter obliges.

_A visitor?_ It’s been weeks and he’s never had one. The timing can’t be a coincidence, surely. 

He wonders if maybe he’s misjudged Tony’s tactics. Wonders if maybe extracting him from this place requires more finesse than he’d initially thought, wonders if these people are more dangerous than he’s been giving them credit for — if Tony would consider playing along with their ruse, they must be.

Would he come himself? Or would he send someone more inconspicuous? The possibilities fly through Peter’s head, his skin tingling with anticipation as they make their way down the corridor.

But when the hallway finally opens up into the rec room, it isn’t Tony standing there waiting for him. It isn’t Rhodey, either, or Natasha, or even Clint. It’s—

“_May_.”

Peter freezes in the doorway. And then he is running, running before he can even think it through, barrelling into her arms and feeling them come up around his back as he presses his face into her shoulder.

“Oh my god,” he lets out on a shaky breath. May smells like their usual fabric softener, like the cold outdoors and like peppermint tea. Like _home_. She’s here. She’s really here. “Oh my god.”

“Hi, honey,” May murmurs back. Her voice is a soothing balm. It’s the warmth of the sun, pushing through a canopy of clouds after too long of nothing but gray skies. It’s everything.

A breath hitches in Peter’s chest. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” May says, pressing a light kiss to his temple, and just that one simple gesture makes him want to erupt into sobs. But he doesn’t, he holds it back — at first because he doesn’t want May to see him cry, and then because the initial burst of joy and relief and love he’d felt at seeing his aunt begins to give way to rationality.

He raises his head, suddenly aware that the room is occupied by people other than just the two of them. He sees the numerous eyes watching their exchange, though many of them are hastily averted, and that rationality gives way to another much less pleasant emotion:

_Fear_.

Because May should not be here. As glad as Peter is to see her, she shouldn’t be here. She _can’t_ be here. He still hasn’t gotten to the bottom of everything, but he knows it isn’t safe.

_Oh god, what has he done?_

He thought he was being clever, making that call, thought he was seizing an opportunity, engineering his escape, but look what it’s wrought: the person he loves most drawn straight into the lions’ den. He feels his breathing pick up, his frantic gaze going to May’s face, where he notices the concealed lines of tension around her eyes and the slight hollowness of her cheeks that he’d missed on first glance.

What have they done to her? What has_ he _done?

"Peter? Peter, what's wrong?” May asks, those lines of tension deepening, though she doesn’t look afraid, just concerned. “Are you all right?”

“I—“

“You guys can take the table in the corner if you like,” interrupts Davis, who has caught up to them. Peter flinches, not having noticed him arrive, but May’s face softens, and she smiles.

“Oh. Thank you, Davis,” she says.

The man flushes slightly. “Ah… Greg, ma’am. You can, uh… it’s Greg.”

“Greg, then. Thank you,” May amends graciously as she steers Peter towards the aforementioned table. Peter allows himself to be steered, brow wrinkling both at the exchange he just witnessed, and at the seeming comfort with which May navigates the room. Almost like…

No. He banishes that thought before it can take root.

_No_.

May takes a seat, and Peter perches stiffly on the one beside her, shoulders hunching forwards and gaze flitting around the room before settling on her face. He leans in. Over here they have a little more privacy. He’s afraid of the answer, afraid of what might have happened to her to lead her here, but he has to ask.

“May—”

“He called me ma’am,” May says, hushed, almost sounding affronted. She looks at Peter. “Am I a ma’am now? Do I look like a ma’am to you? Be honest with me.”

Peter squints. “What?” He shakes his head, collects himself. “No. May, listen — are you… are you okay?”

“Well, I was doing better before I got _ma’am_-ed,” May says with a light scoff. When Peter doesn’t respond in kind, she frowns. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You’re here,” Peter says urgently. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t mean for them to— I’m sorry.”

May looks at him for a long moment, and then she sighs. “No,” she says. “No, look, don’t be. I wish it were under better circumstances, but it was… overdue, really. If anything, _I’m_ sorry that it’s been so long. I know I should visit more often.”

Peter goes still. His voice goes small. “What?”

“Oh. Oh honey, I’m sorry. It’s just with this new job at the homeless shelter and the treatment plan Doctor Lake has in place for you, it isn’t always easy,” she says, leaning in and threading her fingers through his hair, thumb sweeping across his temple reassuringly. Even so, something about the gesture — about her face — seems tense. Strained. “It really is good to see you, though.”

Peter wets his lips. His mouth has gone as dry as the Sahara.

“May, are you — are they making you say this?”

The hand in his hair freezes. May pulls away. Her face goes from _mildly_ _tense_ to _outright_ _drawn_ as she meets his eyes, her own turning wary. Peter is familiar with the way she’s now looking at him — it’s the way everyone in here looks at him — like he’s a live explosive, and the timer is ticking down to zero. He never thought he’d see her look at him like that. It makes his stomach plummet into his feet.

“No one’s making me say anything, baby,” she says carefully.

Peter searches her face, looking for the lie, looking for the cry for help. “If you’re in trouble,” he says, just as carefully as she’d spoken, hoping… and also not hoping... “If someone’s —” he looks over her shoulder and sees Davis’ eyes on them. He lowers his voice. “If someone’s threatening you—”

The corners of May’s lips turn down. “Peter.”

“—May_, please_. You have to call Mr Stark.”

May’s face shutters at that. She shakes her head, sighing.

“Please,” Peter presses. “Please, you have to talk to him. He can help. He can help you, and he can help get me—”

A measured inhale. “I did call him, Peter,” says May, and Peter stops talking. “I mean, well, he called me, but… we talked. That’s why I’m here. He said you called Mr Hogan again.”

Peter frowns. _You call him Harold, _he thinks, certain of the fact although he can’t for the life of him remember why. Something cold begins to unfurl in his stomach.

“I— Yeah, I called Happy.”

May nods, seeming to Peter like she is steeling herself. “You need to stop doing that. Him not changing his number is not an open invitation. We talked about this.”

Peter remembers no such conversation, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not even in the realm of things that matter right now. What matters is—

“He got the call?” Peter asks. There’s a disconnect there. A lack of comprehension. If Happy got the call then— “Why… why wouldn’t he…?”

A line appears on May’s forehead. “Why wouldn’t he what?”

Peter presses his lips together, thinking, his mind whirring. The cold is spreading out, now, curling its tendrils around his chest and forming crystals in his blood. He’s trying to make sense of things, but there’s no sense to be found — at least not any kind he wants to accept. The only reason Happy wouldn’t have acted on that message is if someone got to him before he could, or if…

If…

“May,” he breathes — though breathing is a very loose term for what his lungs are doing right now. “You… you know I’m not crazy, right? You know I’m not supposed to be here. Please tell me you know that this is… that there’s something else going on.”

May doesn’t answer for a moment. Her mouth is a thin line on her pale face. Her eyes avoid his, and when she finally speaks, her voice is sad. Resigned. “Peter…”

That one word is enough to sever any hope he had. In that one word, Peter knows — he knows he just lost his last lifeline.

“No,” he protests anyway, because the alternative is unthinkable. The word comes out as a plea. “I’m not crazy. May, you know I’m not crazy.”

May looks up, wincing. “Honey, you’re not— I don’t like that word, _crazy_. You shouldn’t say that. You just… need some time. Need some…”

“Help?!” He is almost startled by the shrillness of his own voice, whispered as his words are. He sees May flinch, but he barely registers it. All he can think right now is _not her. Not her, too. _“That’s what you were going to say, right? That I need help? I don’t need help, May. I need to get out of here. I need to —“ He shakes his head, unable to believe that this is really happening.

May casts a glance over her shoulder. Peter sees her smile tightly at Davis before she turns back to face him, worry pinching the corners of her eyes. “You need to calm down.”

“I am calm,” Peter says, feeling anything but. He blows out a breath, tries to draw the next one in slower, more controlled. “I am, I just— please, this isn’t— it’s not right. I don’t know what’s going on or how they’re doing it, but this isn’t _real_. It’s a trick, somehow. It’s not—”

“Peter.”

“No, May, you know I wouldn’t do any of this stuff. You have to know that. What they’re saying? I wouldn’t hurt people. I wouldn’t _blow up_ that ferry. I wouldn’t—”

“Peter.”

“No. Just— okay. Okay, look. I can prove it. There’s this guy who lives in the Village. He’s a doctor. Or a— or a wizard, I’m really not too sure which, maybe both, but if anyone can figure out what’s happening here it’s him, May. Please, if you could just call him, if you could just go to him and tell him what’s going on I know he’d be able to—”

"Peter, stop it!"

Peter’s mouth snaps shut. Eyes wide and barely daring to breathe, he stares at May, who is staring right back, looking just as shocked as he feels. He can see her shaking as her hands come up to cover her mouth, like she can’t believe what just escaped it. Her eyes well up, and Peter feels his throat tighten at the sight. He’s never been able to handle May crying.

“I’m sorry,” May says after a moment. “This is— I’m sorry, baby, this is just too much. This is why I…” She shakes her head. “When they told me… I didn’t realise…” 

She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t have to. Peter hears her, clear as a bell: she thinks he’s lost his mind. She didn’t _want_ to come, and that hurts more than anything that’s happened to him over the last few weeks — hurts more than facing the possibility that he really might be in here with good reason. It hurts enough that Peter can’t do anything more than sit there, feeling the blood drain out of his face and his limbs grow heavy with dread as May takes a deep breath, collecting herself.

"Look,” she says. “You have to stop calling Mr Hogan. You have to stop all of this Mr Stark stuff. He’s already been so generous, paying for all of this when my insurance couldn’t, making sure you could stay close by. He didn’t have to do any of that after what happened, and the last thing I want is for anything to change his mind about it. Baby, if you ended up in some state-run hospital I don’t know what I’d do. I’ve seen what happens to people who end up on those wards. It’s… I couldn’t bear it. So I need you to try, okay? For me."

Peter listens, as still as a statue as she speaks, too many things jumping out at him to be able to properly focus on any of them. He was supposed to be in a state facility? Mr Stark already knows he’s here? Mr Stark is _paying _for him to be here? Peter glances around at the rec room they’re sitting in, thinks of his own room, with its private bathroom and admittedly-comfortable queen-size bed. He’s questioned the relative luxury of such a psychiatric hospital before now, so far removed from the versions he’d seen in the movies and video games that form his only prior frame of reference, however inaccurate. May is right — there is no way they would be able to afford this kind of place on their own. It’s one of the primary pillars that have held up his conviction that none of this could be real, but if what she is saying is true…

No. No, it can’t be. He _knows _Mr Stark — _Tony — _and as far more than just some distant benefactor with a misplaced guilty conscience. More than that, he knows _May_. She raised him. She has fought for him tooth and nail at every corner, through thick and thin. She’s always had his back. It’s been the two of them against the world for years, each other’s last family. He can’t believe that she would just give up on him like this. Leave him here.

And then he realises: May would never give up on him. May would never leave him here. She wouldn’t. There’s no way.

He narrows his eyes. He doesn’t know how they’ve managed it, but—

“You’re not my aunt,” he says coldly, feeling certain of it, and yet the devastated, crestfallen expression that lands on May’s face cuts that certainty to shreds, makes him immediately want to backtrack, regret sitting heavy on his chest.

Oh god. What was he thinking? Why would he say that?

Is this what Lake meant when he told him that seeing May right away didn’t usually go very well? Is this what they meant about it doing more harm than good? Right now, the way she’s looking at him, Peter feels like it might be.

“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling his throat closing up around the words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean it, I just… I just… May, I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Everything’s so messed up and I’m— I’m _scared_ and I just want to know what’s _real _because I can’t tell. I don’t know what’s real anymore. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

He’s crying now. Openly. He doesn’t even care that he’s sitting in the middle of the rec room, that Janine is sitting one table over with her mom and her little brother, that Dai is on his usual sofa with his dad, or that Davis and Julie are keeping a calm but alert sentry over them all. He just doesn’t care anymore.

May leans forward to grab his hands. She squeezes them tightly, desperation evident in her grip. The pressure grounds him.

“Honey,” May says, her voice sounding wobbly too, though it’s clear that she is trying to make it firm. “Honey, listen to me. _I’m_ real. This, you and me, this is real. These people trying to help you are real. I love you — that’s real.” She squeezes his hands in hers again, ducks her head to draw his gaze. “Your name is Peter Parker. You’re my kid, and I _love_ you. That’s real.”

Peter sniffles, a small, wretched sound. “I’m so confused.”

“I know, sweetheart, I know. But you’re in the right place. Please believe that. Believe me. You’re in the right place and you’re getting the right treatment and you’re going to get better. And when you _are_ and you get to come home, we’re going to order in Thai and have one of our old-school monster movie marathons, just like old times, and it’ll be like none of this ever happened, like it was just a bad dream.” She cups his face. Swipes her thumb across his cheek, catching a tear that spills down. “But until then, you have to try.”

Peter doesn’t know what to say to that — doesn’t know what he _can_ say. His chest aches with her words, and his wide eyes fix desperately on her face, hoping, pleading, looking for her to take away the hurt even though she’s the one who is causing it.

May’s gaze is just as pleading. "Please,” she says. “I need you to get better."

A moment passes between them, and then—

“Okay,” Peter breathes, and with a sharp pain in his heart, he realises that he actually means it. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ducks rotten fruit*
> 
> Please trust me? Please leave a comment?
> 
> You can hit me up under the same name on tumblr: forensicleaf


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to seekrest, my cheerleader, my friend!

Peter tries to put on a brave face when the time comes for his aunt to leave, smiling weakly as she murmurs words of encouragement in his ear and hugs him and kisses him goodbye, but it doesn’t last long. He can feel the mask slipping as he watches the elevator doors close over her face, slipping further still as he turns back down the hall, and by the time he has shuffled back to his room, let his legs give out from under him and sunk onto the bed, all pretence at being _brave_ or even any kind of _okay_ has trickled into nothingness.

He thought he knew what acceptance was, thought he’d come to terms with this truly being his reality when those two days had passed after the call with no rescue and no contact, but sitting in his room, staring vacantly at the wall with May’s words echoing in his ears, he realises that he’d never truly accepted anything.

Whether in optimism, or foolishness, or naivety, he’d still been clinging onto the last tendrils of hope. But there’s nothing left to cling to anymore. There’s nothing left at all.

In the days that follow the visit, Peter gradually comes to realise that what he’s feeling is grief. He’s experienced so much of it in his life that he’s surprised he didn’t recognise it sooner. It’s hard to get out of bed, hard to eat, hard to sleep, and harder still to care about any of it. There’s a weight attached to everything he does — a heavy, inescapable thing that drags him down into his mattress, down into the floor, lines his limbs with lead and his stomach with rocks. It’s no use fighting it, and Peter finds he has no inclination to try. He just circles the singularity, letting gravity do what gravity does.

“Sweetheart, we’re worried about you,” Karen tells him after attempting to draw him out of his cocoon of blankets for the third time in as many days. The only thing that has actually been successful in doing so is the phone call he received from May two days prior, checking up on him after her visit, and that conversation had felt like such a dance of avoidance around Peter’s situation, stilted and awkward in a way the two of them have never been with each other, that after it ended Peter had crawled straight back into his bed and has barely moved from it since.

It’s not like he _wants_ to lie here all day, and it’s not exactly that he’s refusing to move, it’s just that he… can’t. What should be one of the most normal aspects of daily routine has suddenly become one of the hardest, to the point where even if all of the coaxing and the patient pressure and the understanding he’s been subjected to were enough to make him want to get up, Peter doubts he could. This is something the orderlies all seem to recognise, too, because so far he’s been permitted to remain in his relative isolation with little push back — even had his meds brought directly to him and been allowed to pick at his meals at the desk in his room. He knows the lenience won’t last — eventually he is going to have to face this, face himself — but until that time comes, Peter is content to be afforded the time to wallow in solitude.

His life is a lie, his memories are fabrications, and everything he thought he knew has been torn up right in front of him and thrown in the trash — how else is he supposed to deal with it?

“Won’t you come down and see the others?” Karen prods gently. “It might do you some good to stretch your legs. Get out of this room for a bit.”

Her face is hopeful, sympathetic — a far cry from the disappointed hurt that sat upon it almost a week ago now. Peter knows she feels bad about reporting him to Lake, even though he realises now that she didn’t have much of a choice. He thinks it’s why she has been extra nice and accommodating in the days since, sitting with him when he feels like talking, which isn’t much, and leaving him alone when he doesn’t, which is often.

Peter can’t say the effort to regain his confidence isn’t appreciated, but it _is_ unnecessary: he has long given up his attempt to feel any sort of resentment towards her over the whole thing. After all, she was just doing her job, wasn’t she? And he can’t forget that she had already stuck her neck out for him once before with his hand, putting her position at risk to help him when by all rights she shouldn’t have. When he messed up a second time, what else was she meant to do?

So no, Peter isn’t mad at her. But that doesn’t stop him from turning away from the warmth of her expression, away from the smile that does nothing except make him feel ashamed and guilty for being unable to reciprocate, even for the sake of appearance.

“Not today,” he murmurs.

He can feel Karen’s eyes on his back; his own remain fixed on the wall.

“Peter,” Karen says after a moment, a gentle push, but he doesn’t respond. He stays where he is until he hears Karen let out a light sigh, until he hears her footsteps retreating and knows he is once again alone.

And then, in the silence left behind, he stays where he is anyway.

If there’s one thing this place has taught him, it’s that there’s nowhere he can go that his own mind won’t follow.

* * *

“Peter.”

It’s a day later, and Peter is lying in his nest of blankets, having refused Martinez’ earlier invitation — just as pleasant and patient as all of Karen’s have been — to follow him down to breakfast. The eggs and bacon that were brought back for him almost an hour ago now sit on the desk, barely touched and long-gone cold. What little Peter could choke down sits like wet cement in his stomach.

“We need to address this,” Lake goes on from the desk chair he has pulled up to Peter’s bedside. It’s not the first time he has been here since the weekend, but it is the first time he’s sat down, which Peter doesn’t think bodes well for the hope that he’ll be leaving any time soon. “You’ve had a difficult week, I know, and we’ve given you some time to try and adjust, but I’m going to have to step in, now. This isn’t good for you.”

Peter doesn’t say anything in response, just continues to stare at the wall.

In the silence, the doctor removes his glasses and rubs at his eyes, letting loose a weary sigh. “I understand that you don’t want to talk to me,” he says. “That’s fine; I’m not here to make you. But if you don’t talk to me, Peter, I can’t help you. If nothing changes here we’re looking at another dosage adjustment, most-likely more medication, and that’s something I’d really rather not have to put in place.”

Peter only blinks at that. Where once the mention of additional medication — any medication at all, really — would have sent him spiralling, now there is only dull resignation. What difference does it make in the end, adding extra pills to the cocktail he’s already on? It won’t change anything. It won’t change where he is, or that he’ll be here for the foreseeable future, and it certainly won’t bring back the last two years of his life, lost forever to a fantasy.

Lake leans forward. “You don’t want that, either, Peter, surely?”

Honestly, Peter doesn’t know what he wants anymore. A week ago, he did. It had been so clear — a driving force, his singular focus — but then his world had been turned on its head, and what he’d wanted had become something impossible, unattainable. His goal had to shift, and while he knows there’s a clear goal to shift _to_, trying to get himself to change direction towards it has felt like trying to escape quicksand, like the more he struggles forward, the more he’s pulled backwards.

The life he remembers was _good, _warm, fulfilling, even if it was just a dream, and every effort to leave it behind only reminds him that this one is a nightmare by comparison — why should he choose it?

But even in his bitter apathy, he knows the answer to that question:

May.

It always comes down to May.

She’d been real, and she’d been here, and Peter had made her a promise. It had torn him to pieces, yes, but he’d made her a promise, one he knows he hasn’t been fulfilling. He promised her he would try.

He promised he’d try.

He swallows. Blows out a breath. His voice is rusty from days of disuse, but it’s clear enough as he says, “I don’t really feel like talking.”

He doesn’t look at Lake, but he senses the man shifting slightly at his words. For some reason Peter doesn’t fully understand, perhaps down to ingrained politeness, he finds himself adding, “To um, to anyone, not just you.”

It’s more than he’s offered up to anybody else over the past few days, though nothing that wouldn’t be decipherable from his behaviour. Still, he sees the doctor nod approvingly in his peripheral vision.

“Sometimes those are the times we need to talk the most. Why is it you don’t want to, now?”

Peter clamps down on a sigh of his own. Why doesn’t he want to talk? Because of questions like that. Because he doesn’t want to have to address the turmoil that’s been plaguing him for days, or to have to explain the conflict that has been raging inside of him — the tug of war between what he knows in his heart to be true, and what he knows in his head can’t possibly be. If he says it out loud, admits it to another person, it makes it real, and despite everything that’s happened, that is something he still can’t quite come to terms with.

He shakes his head minutely, lips tightly sealed, but in his ears, May’s words echo.

_I need you to try, okay? For me._

He promised.

He works his jaw.

“It’s… hard.”

Lake nods at that, too. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect it to be anything else. That’s why I’m here, though. It’s why we’re all here — to guide you through the hard conversations.” There, he pauses, maybe waiting for Peter to volunteer something in the silence, but when that doesn’t happen, the doctor clears his throat. “This is all about healing, Peter, and sometimes healing isn’t linear or easy, but I can promise that it will be worth it in the end. Whatever path we have to take to get you there, you’re not on your own. We’re here with you, every step of the way.”

It’s supposed to be reassuring, but it isn’t. All it does is serve to remind Peter that there’s no escape from this. That the only way out is through, and the tunnel is long.

“Don’t you want to heal?” Lake presses.

The reflexive retort that he doesn’t need healing, that he’s not broken, sits on the tip of Peter’s tongue, but the words don’t spring forward with the same kind of conviction that they had a few days ago, and saying them out loud now would feel like a lie — to both Doctor Lake, and to himself. He says nothing.

“Please, Peter. I want to help you.”

_Please, I need you to get better._

A moment passes, and in that moment, Peter makes a decision. He exhales hard, tries to let some of the animosity he feels towards the man sitting beside him escape with the air. He remains wary, of course — his experiences with the doctor here have been mixed — but he finds himself wondering now just how much of that animosity was even warranted in the first place.

“I… want to go home,” he says quietly. “I want to—“

He pauses. Steadies himself.

“—_get better_.”

His words are addressed to the ceiling, but now Peter hazards a brief glance towards Lake. The man looks almost… proud, and somehow something about that both eases the tight ache winding up in Peter’s chest and makes it worse.

“Okay,” the doctor says. “Well, I’m glad to finally hear you say that and mean it. That’s our goal, too. It’s why we’re all here. We can get you better.”

Peter turns his head, meeting the Doctor’s gaze properly now.

“And then I can go home?”

Lake’s mouth turns down at the corners, his eyes pinching in sympathy. “Not quite, I’m afraid. The state requires you stay here until at least your eighteenth birthday. There’ll be a review on your recovery at that point, but if all goes well between now and then, then yes, I see no reason why you wouldn’t be able to go home.”

Peter swallows thickly. _His eighteenth birthday_. That’s over a year away. Fifteen months. Thinking about being inside this place for so long twists his stomach something awful, sends a panic surging through his body that makes him want to run and run and never stop, and yet…

Where can he go? What choice does he have?

He takes a breath, feels it shudder all the way down into his lungs.

“How do I…? What do I need to do?”

Leaning back in his chair, Lake smiles.

* * *

Things get a little easier after that.

Peter thought it would be harder to return to routine after days of no structure, but surprisingly it doesn’t take much time at all. He starts off small, re-joining the rest of the group for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at first, and after that it isn’t long before he’s progressed to once again sitting on his usual sofa in the rec room for social hour, both sessions of the day.

_(He tries not to think too hard about the fact that he has begun to refer to this spot as ‘his usual’.)_

_(It’s always there in the back of his mind, anyway.)_

He doesn’t talk to any of the others yet, and none of the others talk to him, but aside from Dai, whose dislike of Peter is at least consistent, whatever contempt was being directed toward him after the phone call fiasco seems to have dissipated. When he places his tray down on the table between Janine and Robbie now, they no longer send him the resentful glares he’d been privy to for those few miserable days, just glance up with mild interest before returning to their own food — a quiet acceptance that Peter is grateful for, even if he’s not quite ready to act on it yet.

As for his own acceptance, it waxes and wanes alongside the intense ache that is present in his chest every minute of every day. It’s the kind of indignant ache that can only come from reluctant capitulation, from giving in when everything inside is screaming not to, but it’s one that Peter swallows down, for the same reason he swallows down the white pills, and the pink and blue ones: because he has to.

Because he has to get better.

Because he can’t leave May all alone.

She calls for him again. In fact, since her visit, and given the fact that Peter is _making progress _(Lake’s words, though Peter finds he doesn’t resent hearing them) the phone calls have become a semi-regular occurrence. Peter does his best to look forward to them, even though every conversation the two of them have still feels akin to navigating land mines, disheartening for the cautiousness with which his aunt addresses him.

“She loves you, man. She just wants to make sure you’re okay,” Anil tells him, catching the involuntary slump of Peter’s shoulders as he hangs up the phone one day. 

(Just because Peter is now allowed to make and receive calls does not mean that he is allowed to do so unsupervised, though Anil and most of the other orderlies do their best to give him some privacy still.)

“I know,” Peter says. And he does: it’s just a temporary thing, their conversations feeling this way, it won’t feel like this forever, but still he can’t help but wonder if it might be best to wait to speak with May until he is a little better still, until he can talk to her without feeling so demoralised by the worry and tentativeness woven between the strands of love in her voice, and until she can talk to him without feeling the need to weave them.

He would never tell her that, of course, but perhaps something in his voice does anyway because what starts as a few calls every week turns into weekly calls few and far between in less time than would make sense otherwise. The strangest thing is that for all his desperation and insistence on making contact in the first place, Peter is surprisingly okay with that. Now he knows that the option is there when he needs it, it makes it easier to go without, to focus on the things he can do for himself in here instead of the things he can’t control out there.

Lake had told him weeks earlier that if he wanted to get out of Newhaven, if he wanted to go home, then he needed to start helping himself.

Now, Peter decides to listen.

* * *

It’s a Tuesday when Peter does something he’s never done before. Thirty minutes before the end of social hour he climbs off his usual perch and makes his way across the rec room to the table where Janine, Robbie, and Sarah are playing Blackjack.

The conversation dries up as he approaches, all of them stopping what they’re doing to look up at him standing awkwardly behind the spare seat with expressions ranging from neutral, to wary, to confused.

“Um… hi,” Peter says, feeling his face grow hot under their scrutiny. His fingers twitch into his palms, but his feet remain planted. He swallows. “Can I— can I join?”

It’s a Tuesday when Peter stops feeling quite so alone.

* * *

“Well, look at you!”

Of all the orderlies who could have been on the rounds this morning, it figures that it would be Karen who opens Peter’s door. She places her hands on her hips and gives him a once over, taking in not only the usual white t-shirt and grey sweatpants he’s wearing, but also the glasses that had, up until now, been lying discarded on the nightstand, with an expression of delight.

Peter, still self-conscious of the overly-thick frames and how odd they feel sitting on his face despite the clarity they afford his vision, flushes.

“They look stupid. I knew it. I’m just gonna—”

“Uh uh uh, don’t you dare,” Karen says as Peter reaches for his face. “You look very handsome, young man, and I won’t have you depriving this place or your eyes by taking those off.”

Peter didn’t think it was possible for his cheeks to get warmer, but get warmer, they do. “Karen,” he groans, rolling his eyes, though he drops his hand all the same.

The glasses stay where they are.

When he gets down to breakfast, Dai predictably makes an unkind joke, but the sting of it is only fleeting, overshadowed by the swell of warmth Peter feels when he catches the same expression of gleeful approval that he’d seen on Karen’s face on Martinez’ and Anil’s too — so much clearer now for the lenses on his face. It’s what makes him put the glasses on the next day, and the day after that, and it’s what makes him keep putting them on every time that little voice in the back of his head whispers that he doesn’t really need them, that he’s making a mistake.

That voice is wrong. Peter knows that now. He knows it’s just there to trip him up, make him doubt himself, get in the way of his recovery.

Luckily though, that voice grows that little bit quieter every day.

Luckily, Peter is learning to ignore it.

* * *

“I’ve noticed you participating in games and social activities with the others again,” Lake mentions in one of their bi-weekly sessions together. “That’s a big step. How has it been for you?”

“Okay,” Peter answers. And truthfully, it has been. Peter was worried about how Janine in particular would react to him reaching out given how awful he’d been to her, but as it turns out, all it took was the extension of an olive branch on his part for her to re-extend her friendship in return. Now that she has, Peter even finds himself occasionally looking forward to social hour, which is something he never thought he would say.

“I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad you’re reforming relationships. It’s an important part of recovery. Honestly, I’m astounded by how far you’ve come in such a short time, but it just goes to show how capable you are when you set your mind to something. You should be proud of yourself. I know I am.”

Peter feels the tips of his ears go warm, something bright unfurling in his chest at Lake’s praise. Like with Karen, Martinez, and Anil with his glasses, the feeling that he’s doing a good job is a welcome one. It’s nice for someone to tell him that he’s doing something right. And though that recognition isn’t coming from the person he wishes it were coming from, even now—

_(Stop it, Peter, you know you can’t have that. You know you _never_ had that. Why would Tony Stark ever show any interest in you? Think about it. He just felt bad for the crazy kid who blew up a ferry trying to get his attention. That’s all.)_

—Peter finds himself craving more.

“I… yeah, well, I’ve just been trying to take on board what you said. About um, helping myself. That’s all, really.”

Lake scoffs. “Nonsense. Don’t sell yourself short. It isn’t easy to admit we need help — even harder still to embrace it and make our own changes, especially when it feels contrary to what our mind is telling us. I know how hard it’s been for you to take those steps, Peter. You should really give yourself more credit.”

Peter ducks his head. He might crave the praise, but that doesn’t mean he knows what to do with it. It’s instinct to dismiss it, but maybe Lake is right: maybe he should be treating himself with a little more kindness. Like the doctor said, it hasn’t been easy for him — knowing what’s real doesn’t mean as much as it should when all of his memories tell him something else instead. Going against his own brain is a daily struggle; would it really be so bad to give himself some credit for that?

Hesitantly, Peter returns Lake’s smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

* * *

Life goes on, as life is wont to do. Peter takes all his pills right on time and doesn’t feel the side-effects half as much. He joins in with all the group activities he’s invited to participate in, and he continues to throw himself headfirst into therapy with Doctor Lake as best he can, given the wariness he still finds difficult to shake off around the man.

It’s not that Lake has done anything wrong exactly — quite the opposite, in fact; given the caginess and downright hostility Peter knows he was subjecting him to, the man’s been more patient than he deserves, talking Peter through his doubts and confusion with nothing but kindness, understanding and encouragement — but for some reason, Peter just can’t let go of his suspicions. It’s something he feels conflicted about. He’s torn between wanting to trust Lake the way May told him he should, and trusting his own admittedly questionable instincts.

He wonders if maybe he’s just being paranoid.

On a warm day in early June, he asks Janine what she thinks of the doctor.

They’re sitting in one of the big bay windows in the rec room, enjoying the sunshine. It isn’t social hour, but Peter has recently begun to take advantage of the unlocked doors during the day, getting out of his room more often and socialising. Carl is sitting in the armchair by the door, seeing as patients aren’t allowed to be entirely unsupervised when together, but he’s clearly more interested in the book he’s reading than whatever it is they’re talking about, which is just as well, given the topic.

Janine twists her head at Peter’s question, drawing a Twizzler out of the packet her little brother Sam had gifted her at his last visit and popping it in her mouth.

“Lake? Why?”

“Just wondering,” says Peter, though he is not in fact _just wondering_. He’s been thinking about it for weeks, through every session with the guy and for a long time after each of them ends. He needs to know if he’s making something out of nothing.

“He’s pretty chill, I guess,” is Janine’s answer. “Way better than the doc at the last place I was at, anyway. He was this crusty old dude with hair coming out of his ears and he always used to just say crap like _how does that make you feel? _just — all of the time. Like a walking stereotype. _How does that make you feel? How does that make you feel. _Like, I’m in a nut house, Sigmund, how do you _think_ that makes me feel? At least Lake actually talks to us like we’re people, y’know?” She holds out the packet of Twizzlers to Peter, who takes one, chewing at it as he mulls that over.

“I didn’t know you’d been in a psych ward before this one,” he says.

Janine shrugs. “Yeah well, there’s a lot you don’t know. Or, well, you do, and you’ve forgotten. Ha. Guess it would be kind of mean to mess with you now, huh?”

She winks at him.

“Very,” says Peter, throwing her a look before clearing his throat. “So. Lake. You don’t think he’s kind of…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Intense?”

Janine doesn’t answer for a moment, chewing her own Twizzler, face thoughtful.

“I guess he can be,” she says eventually. “I mean, no one actually _likes_ talking to him — he’s a shrink — but… he’s a good guy, I think. And he does know what he’s talking about. If you ever want to get out of here you should probably listen to what he has to say.”

Peter simply hums in response.

He doesn’t know what he’d hoped Janine would say, but for some reason it doesn’t feel like that was it.

* * *

Now that time is all he has, Peter uses most of it to get to know the other patients a little better, and the orderlies, too.

The first surprising thing he learns is that Robbie is practically a musical genius who can play not only the piano, but also the violin and the clarinet almost perfectly. That he wants to go to Julliard. He learns that Martinez is a single dad to two little girls, and that after he finishes here at Newhaven he goes to work a second job in the laundromat at the local hospital, trying to put enough aside for a college fund for the two of them. He learns that underneath the sarcastic exterior, Davis is a self-confessed dork who collects vintage Star Wars action figures, that Dai is actually capable of solving a Rubik’s cube in mere minutes but just chooses not to, and that Julie rides a motorcycle.

He learns that Laura has been in various institutions ever since the Chitauri invasion and hasn’t spoken a word since.

Every new piece of information he gleans helps Peter to cement his place in this world, helps him feel like part of a group, a community. Still, for all that he learns and all that he tries and wishes and hopes to get better, not a single thing seems to jolt his memory. No matter how hard he pushes his brain, how much he tries to spark some kind of recollection of laughing with Janine, or of wiping the floor with Robbie and Karen at Poker as is apparently his legacy, the last two years of life in this facility remain a complete blank space in his mind, overshadowed entirely by vibrant flashes of swinging around New York on the end of a web, and of fighting aliens, and the Avengers, and of familial moments with a man that logic — and Doctor Lake — tells him he couldn’t possibly know.

“Well,” Lake says when Peter finally asks him about it in one of their sessions together. “I’m afraid there’s no one singular explanation for that. There are many factors that could be causing the memory block, but in your case, I think it’s not untoward to suggest that it’s down to a combination of both trauma and the underlying conditions which affect how you respond to it, as you know I’ve mentioned before.”

“Conditions,” Peter echoes. “Like the, um… like the…”

“Schizophrenia, yes,” Lake finishes kindly when Peter can’t, the word still too big, too final. “It’s okay to say it. I think that after what happened to your — to _you_, the hallucinations and delusions became a way out of a world that had become painful — a way of coping, as it were. Over time, that progressed to the point where reality itself became the trauma you were trying to suppress, hence the lack of recollection. I believe your memories are there, somewhere, Peter, just as they were the last time you had a setback. Given time they may return, or they may not. All we can do is be patient, and where we can, try to peel back the layers of the world you’ve built around this one to reach them.”

Peter frowns, looking down at his hands. “I don’t know how to. Everything still—” He pauses, flicks his gaze up to the doctor. “All of it still feels so real.”

“I’m sure it does. That’s the thing about delusions — they’re often indistinguishable from reality. It’s what makes them so difficult to overcome, even in lucid moments. Talking it through might help, though, if you feel up to it. What is it you’re struggling with?”

Peter blows out a breath. “There’s just… a lot I don’t understand. And I’m not saying that all this isn’t real, I’m not saying that at _all_, I just… I guess some things still don’t really, um, make sense to me?”

“Like?”

Lake’s expression is nothing short of understanding, patient, but still Peter presses his lips together, reluctant to risk losing the modicum of ground they’ve gained over the past few weeks by speaking any further.

“I mean, there’s a few things but…”

He pulls his lip between his teeth.

“I knew Happy’s number,” he finishes quietly, eyes focused on his knees. There are a lot of things he has been able to let go of, but this is not one of them. It’s an unexplained discrepancy that has hovered in the back of his mind, sinking its claws into every shred of progress he’s made and threatening to undo it all. He knows he has to address it if he ever wants to move on, but he still feels disappointed in himself for lingering on it. He has the horrible feeling that he’s disappointing Doctor Lake, too.

It’s a feeling that is only exacerbated when Lake lets out a short sigh and says, “Ah.”

That’s it. Just, _Ah_. That one syllable makes Peter’s stomach contract down until it feels like a lead ball sitting heavy in his gut. Should he try to explain himself? He feels like anything he says now will only make things worse. He says nothing.

When he hazards a glance at Lake, the doctor isn’t looking at him, but instead at some fixed point in the middle ground between them, his brow furrowed. The waiting is torture, but Peter forces himself to stay quiet while the man thinks.

“You want to know how you came by that knowledge,” Lake says eventually.

Peter nods.

“Well, I can give you the explanation for that, Peter, but I actually think this might be an opportunity to do some of that peeling back we discussed. Let me ask you this: how do _you_ think you came to possess the number?”

For a moment, Peter isn’t sure what the doctor is asking. It feels a bit like a trick, but he answers honestly. “I… after Germany, Mr Stark put it…” he begins, but he trails off as Doctor Lake begins to shake his head.

“I already know how you remember it. What I’m asking, given the knowledge that how you remember it did not in fact happen, is how you think you got the number.”

“You mean… if I didn’t get it from Mr Stark?”

“You know you didn’t get it from Tony Stark,” Lake asserts, “so, how else could you have?”

Now, Peter thinks he understands.

“I don’t know,” he starts carefully. “I mean, Happy is head of security, so it’s not like his number is just… on the Stark Industries website or anything. I couldn’t have just found it. And I’m good with chemistry, not programming, so I wouldn’t have been able to bypass the firewall…” He frowns. “But… I know someone who could.”

He glances up, sees the brightness in Lake’s eyes, and knows that he’s got it.

“Are you familiar with Occam’s Razor?” Lake asks.

“The simplest explanation is usually the right one?”

“Exactly. Here we have two versions of events. In the first, you were bitten by a spider and received super-powers, you drew Tony Stark’s attention by performing extraordinary feats such as catching moving cars, you travelled illegally to a foreign country to take part in a fight between the world’s most powerful entities and after all of that, you had made enough of an impression that you were given Mr Hogan’s private phone number as a result. In the second your friend — Ned, isn’t it? — used his considerable computer skills to gain access to Stark Industries’ internal server and retrieve that number for you. That’s it. One version requires many additional steps, implausible ones at that, the other requires none. So, I’ll ask again: how do you think you got the number?”

“I mean, I remember—”

“I’m not asking what you remember, Peter. I’m asking you to think — really think — about plausibility here.”

Peter swallows. “It makes more sense that Ned got the number for me,” he says. And it does. There’s no denying that. So why does it feel so wrong to say so?

Lake nods in approval. “You wanted to know how to reclaim reality,” he says. “How to start breaking the hold these delusions have on you still. Well, this is how you can do that — by using logic to dismantle the story you’ve created in your mind. When you have these doubts, when you’re unsure of what’s real, what I want you to do is ask yourself: _what do I believe_, and then _what is the most logical explanation._ It’s far from an infallible process, but I really think it will help you. Simply being aware that your brain is playing tricks goes a long way towards being able to enjoy a relatively normal life. In fact, plenty of people live with delusions and hallucinations every day. It’s not necessarily about curing that — sometimes it’s just about managing the symptoms. Medication does make a difference, but ultimately you can’t help the things you see, or hear. What you _can_ help is the way you respond to them. Do you understand?”

The notion that Peter can’t trust his own mind is an unsettling one, one he hasn’t fully been able to come to terms with yet, and one he’s not sure he ever truly will. But what Lake is saying makes sense, as hard as it is to accept.

“I understand,” Peter says. “I… I can do that.”

Maybe he’ll never be able to sort out fact from fiction in his head, not completely, but he can at least learn to give himself a fighting chance.

* * *

Fifteen months.

Sixty-three weeks.

Four hundred and forty one days, give or take a few, stretching off into the distance.

Some days Peter doesn’t know how he’s going to manage to get through them all. Sometimes the claustrophobia is so intense that it’s all he can do to pace the length of his room and try not to vomit.

Sometimes he can’t even do that.

Those days are the worst. The days where he finds himself back in his cocoon of blankets, staring vacantly at the wall — the days where the year ahead of him seems more like a lifetime, and all positivity or motivation flees in the face of it. But thankfully, those days are few and far between.

_It’s just time_, Peter tells himself, over and over again. All he has to do is just focus on that far distant date, knowing that every minute spent here brings him closer to it. He can do this. He can deal with the monotony and the therapy and the doubts and the conflicting memories, or lack thereof, because all of it leads him one step closer to getting better, to getting home. The more he reminds himself of that, the less he struggles with it, and generally speaking, day by day things get easier.

Peter might not be good right now, but with the connections he’s forming, and the laughter that is gradually creeping back into his life, he finally starts to think he might eventually get there.

Which is, of course, when everything falls apart.

Because, three hours after the lights go out on what has up until that point been a non-eventful day, Peter wakes with a start to his heart racing and the feeling of being watched sending goose bumps prickling over every inch of his skin.

He thinks for a moment that even though he has a tendency to sleep through the nightly rounds now, it’s one of the orderlies who has woken him, perhaps by closing the door a little too forcefully or casting their flashlight into the room a little too long. But as his eyes adjust to the darkness, he realises he’s wrong. It isn’t an orderly who has pulled him from sleep. It isn’t an orderly at all.

The instant he realises this, he is scrambling to sit up, hand fumbling across the nightstand for his glasses and knocking over the plastic cup there in the process. Water spills onto the floor, but this, Peter barely notices. All of his focus is on the corner of his room, and the partially-illuminated figure standing there.

The light coming in from the hallway is dim, only emergency lights on at this time of the night, and Peter’s shaking hands struggle to unfold the arms of his glasses, but there is no mistaking what — or rather, _who_ he is seeing.

“Mr Stark?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is taking care of themselves in these uncertain times. Drink some water, watch some silly tik toks, get some fresh air where you can and it's safe to do so, and of course, read some fic :)
> 
> As always, please let me know what you think. Comments make me happy!!
> 
> Y’all know where to find me on tumblr: @forensicleaf


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always to seekrest for being my sounding board!!

Peter ducks his head for a second — just a second — to slide his glasses up the bridge of his nose. When he lifts his eyes again, it is to a crystal clear view of an entirely empty room.

He blinks. He can feel his heartbeat in the tips of his fingers, can barely hear past the thundering of it in his ears.

“Mr Stark?” he whispers again, eyes flitting from shadowy corner to shadowy corner, searching the darkness.

Silence is his only response.

For a moment, Peter sits in it, straining his ears, straining his eyes, barely daring to breathe, but as the seconds tick on and the room remains quiet, remains still, rationality begins to creep in.

There’s no one there.

Of course there’s no one there.

The adrenaline-fuelled burst of hope and exhilaration starts to recede, and it’s only as it does that Peter realises the full extent to which he’d felt either. The crushing disappointment that rises now to take their place aches all the more for its polarity, sitting on him like a physical weight and pressing down hard on his chest. His hands clench into tight fists at his sides, nails digging sharply into his palms.

_Stupid, so stupid. _Mr Stark was never in his room; how could he have been? It’s the middle of the night, for starters, and there are bars on the window — not to mention a locked door and a whole team of orderlies to get past if coming in from the other side. None of that would be a problem for Iron Man, of course, but Peter had seen no sign of such a suit — just Tony, in jeans and an old printed tee that had been gone before Peter had the clarity of vision to make out the design.

Why on Earth would Tony stage a rescue in jeans and a t-shirt? And dismissing the _hows_, why would he leave without saying anything?

The simple answer, the only answer, is that he wouldn’t. The Tony Stark Peter knows—

Peter swallows thickly.

The Tony Stark he _thinks _he knows wouldn’t have been quiet about busting him out of here, suit or no suit. That Tony Stark would be smashing through the wall in a fully armed Mark LV, repulsors charged and ready to fire, or storming the front desk in a designer three-piece with an army of litigators hot on his heels. He’s never been one for stealth — not when it comes to people he cares about.

But then… he doesn’t care about Peter, does he? Not in reality. Not anywhere other than in Peter’s head. As much as it stings, Peter has to accept that he must have been dreaming. That the manifestation was just his unconsciousness’ wishful thinking. Either that, or…

An icy finger trails down his spine. He brushes it off with a shiver. Shakes his head.

No. He was definitely dreaming. That’s all. He’s been taking all of his medication, had no incidents, and he’s been doing so well in group and in therapy, come so far — everyone’s said so. It wouldn’t make sense for it to be anything else, not now.

It wouldn’t make sense.

It has to have been a dream.

But once that insidious thought has wormed its way into Peter’s brain, it refuses to leave. When he finally lies back down and rests his head on the pillow, it’s with a tension that locks his limbs in a way he knows means they’ll be aching tomorrow, and with a twitchiness that has him flinching and flinging his eyes open wide with every creak of a settling pipe or breath of wind through the iron grating on the other side of his window.

Sleep comes in uneasy fits and starts, and Peter spends the long periods of wakefulness between them feeling like he is waiting — waiting for something to happen, or maybe waiting for some_one_.

Whether it’s with anticipation or with dread is something he can’t decide.

* * *

As expected, Peter wakes the next morning stiff and sore and altogether un-rested, but he also wakes moderately reassured by the knowledge that whatever it was that had happened last night—

_(A dream. It was just a dream.)_

—it had only happened the once. Though he’d awoken multiple times to an unfamiliar noise and the uncomfortable sensation of his heart trying to pound its way through his sternum, the only faces he’d seen after that first one had belonged to the orderlies, coming along every two hours to check that he was both still in his room and at least trying to get some rest.

Davis had queried the glasses still sitting on Peter’s face when he came by, and Peter just said he fell asleep reading. Anil questioned the water on the floor; Peter told him it was an accident and promised to clean it up first thing.

It had seemed important, even bone-tired and highly-strung as he was, to keep what really happened close to his chest. Peter doesn't know why, and he doesn’t know why he continues to hold his tongue when Anil comes back to make sure he’s up for breakfast, either — why he doesn’t mention Tony’s split-second appearance to Janine, or to Doctor Lake during his session with him later that day, nor to any of the other providers at the facility in the hours in between.

He reasons with himself that a one-time occurrence surely isn’t worth raising the alarm over, isn’t worth derailing what has become a recent series of wins for him, and especially not when the fact is that it was most likely nothing, anyway. Peter had been dead to the world in the moments before the shadow Tony had appeared, and plenty of people have weird things happen when they wake suddenly from a deep sleep. Hell, he remembers May telling him the story of how one time she’d woken up and for a few terrifying, groggy seconds, stared at the face of the man lying next to her and had absolutely no idea who he was, only to realise a moment later that it was Ben, her husband of ten years. It happens.

But still, Peter can’t shake the nervous alertness that has him analysing every shadow, double checking every glimpse of a mirror, and watching the wall across from his bed well into the small hours of the morning each night, unable to sleep until sheer exhaustion pulls his eyes closed. Even then, rest is fleeting.

He keeps his mouth shut through it all, but figures if anything else happens, if he sees anything weird, _then_ he’ll tell someone.

Once or twice the click of the A/C units engaging sounds like the breath of a name, a half-sentence said on a sigh. A handful of times, he thinks he catches the outline of a person on the edge of his vision, but when he turns his head it’s to realise that it’s only one of the potted plants that are dotted around the ward, leaves waving slightly in the air stirred up by his stride, or just a shadow thrown onto the wall by the sun. One time, it’s actually Julie, whose head tilts slightly at Peter’s stiff posture and wide eyes. He tells her she just startled him, and she doesn’t push it any further.

None of these things count, he decides. Every one of them is easily explained. It’s just him, wandering around permanently on edge that’s causing all this. He thought he saw _one_ thing in a half-asleep state, and now he’s jumping at shadows. He needs to get a grip, stop being so paranoid. 

After two days of this, of everything turning out to in fact be nothing, the edginess Peter feels slowly begins to abate. With it, so too do the number of incidents-that-aren’t-really-incidents, further cementing his theory that it was his own nervous disposition that was causing them all in the first place.

Peter starts to relax; things start to go back to normal, and he remains the only one aware that they ever might not have been.

He feels relief.

Everything is going to be okay.

Everything is fine.

* * *

Tuesday afternoon finds Peter in the rec room with the others. He’s not sure who decided on the activity today, but he, Robbie and Janine are sat at the central table with a pile of animal-themed colour-by-numbers sheets, from which they’ve drawn their current projects. Peter’s is an elephant, Robbie’s is a wolf, and Janine is currently filling in the reddish-brown of a lion’s mane. Dai had decided to forego the colouring-by-numbers and opted instead for his signature activity of cube-by-colours. No real surprises there.

“I had a friend who liked to draw,” Peter finds himself saying as he carefully fills in his number threes with a dark, almost black grey. They’re using crayons, lest the three of them try to form makeshift weapons out of pencils, he assumes, but the colour still makes him think of notebooks filled with charcoal scribbles and shade, of pages half-way obscured by a curtain of dark curly hair. A small, slightly-sad smile tugs at his lips. “She was really good at it too. Like, scary good.”

“I know,” Janine says, “MJ.”

When Peter looks at her in surprise, she just shakes her head, mouth lifting at the corner. “You think you haven’t mentioned her before now? C’mon, you’ve got it bad, dude.”

“I— what? _No,_” Peter splutters, face flaring hot as he scrambles to think of all the embarrassing things past-him might have shared about this — things that, okay, _yes_, were probably true, because MJ is one of the strangest, most impressive, most completely and totally magnetising people he’s ever met in his life, and because _yes_, Peter absolutely feels all weird and warm when he thinks about her, but things that are also completely irrelevant because even if they ever _were_ friends to begin with here, Peter’s almost certain that being forcibly committed to a psych ward for two years — not to mention the things he did for that to happen — will have destroyed just about any chance he had with her.

“_Yes_,” Janine counters, looking smug.

Peter just scowls at her, though he imagines the effect is dampened somewhat by the redness of his face. “Shut up.”

Janine presses her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh. Peter scoffs and returns to his artwork.

He’s in the middle of colouring in his number eights — the reds of his elephant’s flower crown — when he’s suddenly hit by that same, prickly sensation of being watched from the other night. From _the _night.

_“Pete.”_

Peter jolts. A cold dread sweeps over him as his head jerks up, swivels to look behind him where the call had come from. The only person there is Carl, who is resolutely focused on the stack of charts in front of him, and clearly not trying to get Peter’s attention.

“What?” Janine asks, pulling Peter’s focus back around. Her brows are drawn together, crayon poised above her sheet and eyes assessing. Robbie looks up from his own drawing with a similarly curious expression.

Peter opens his mouth. Closes it again. His heart is jack-hammering in his chest, and it takes a second for it to calm down enough for him to speak.

“I thought…” he starts, and then thinks better of it. Shakes his head. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Janine doesn’t look convinced. “Are you okay? You’ve been kind of… jumpy lately.”

“I’m fine,” Peter says. He looks down at his sheet, at the dark red line now cutting through a two section, a four section, and a seven section — none of which should be red. His trembling hands curl into fists. He’s ruined the picture. “Shit.”

Janine peers over to inspect the damage. “Oh. Well, it’s not that bad,” she says.

“It’s a mess.”

“Hey, it’s all right. Look, you can swap with me if you like.”

Peter lifts his head, irritation rising hot and fast up his throat. Is that what she thinks this is about? A stupid drawing? Peter might be sitting here with what is essentially a colouring sheet with step-by-step instructions, but he isn’t five years old; he’s not going to lose it over a spoiled piece of art.

He’s about to say so, but when he sees Janine’s face, that impulse is quick to recede, along with any frustration: her lips are pressed together, her face slightly pallid, and there are lines of tension around her eyes. Peter looks down at her drawing, at the crayon she is now tapping agitatedly against the page, and sees that only the sixes have yet to be completed there. His own are already coloured in with grey.

“Yeah,” he says on a heavy exhale, feeling the stirrings of shame. “Yeah, sure. Here.”

“Thanks, Pete.” Janine flashes him a weak smile. After a moment of staring down at the half-finished elephant he passes her she says, “I, uh… I’m sorry about teasing you about MJ.”

“Forget it,” Peter says, and he means it; he already has. Even if he hadn’t, whether or not anyone knows about his interest in Michelle, a girl who is miles out of his league and completely unattainable besides, is the least of his worries right now. Somehow the disquiet of being hounded by disembodied voices and spectral figures has a way of eclipsing any other concerns.

He chews his lip.

Maybe he hadn’t heard what he thought he heard. It had sounded so clear, but… maybe it’s just like before; it’s entirely possible it had just been the noise of something being dropped or moved in the hallway, isn’t it? Or maybe someone talking out there. It had come from that direction, after all. And Janine is right; Peter might have relaxed some, but he knows he’s remained on edge. Perhaps that’s still causing him to fill in sounds where there are none, hear voices in otherwise-ambient noise.

_How is that any better than the other thing? _the more-rational part of his brain asks. Peter ignores it, focusing instead on the drawing before him.

He looks down at the lion, noticing the bared fangs for the first time and thinking it’s an odd choice for what is supposed to be a calming activity. The chart in the top right corner of the sheet shows that the sixes are supposed to be a gold-yellow, so this is what he grabs now from the pot. He’s only just touched the crayon to the page when—

_“Kid.”_

Peter’s hand clenches around the crayon so tightly that even without super-strength, he thinks he might be in danger of crushing it. All the hairs rise along his arms.

He’s slow to lift his head this time, wary of attracting more curious looks or suspicion, but when he does, the scene before him is the same. It’s Robbie and Janine sitting at the table with him, Laura and Dai sitting over by the window, and Carl towards the door, head down and disinterested in the rest of the room.

In a brief flash of desperation Peter wonders if maybe Dai is messing with him, but he knows he isn’t. For one thing, the voice had come from the opposite side of the room; for another there’s no way Dai could resist sneaking a glimpse of Peter’s reaction, and he remains as disinterested in what’s going on around him as Carl does. On top of that, Peter knows it hadn’t sounded anything like him.

For all Peter’s denial, there’s no mistaking whose voice it was.

He closes his eyes and exhales slowly.

Why did this have to happen? Why did this have to happen _now_? Things were finally looking up. He was finally starting to feel normal, or at least some vague shade of it. Finally starting to feel like he could have some kind of life again. It isn’t _fair_.

There’s a dull _crack_ as the crayon he’s holding snaps in his hand. He looks down at it for a long moment, the two pieces still held together by only the flimsy paper wrapping, and then he drops it on the table. Watches it roll away.

With a squeak against the tiles and a churning stomach, he pushes his chair back. He stands, and ignoring the gazes that follow him, makes his way over to the door to Carl.

He knows what he has to do, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Doesn’t mean his hands aren’t shaking.

When Peter is standing in front of him, Carl looks up from his charts, frowning slightly. “All right, Parker?”

Peter swallows, opens his mouth to reply. He fully intends to say, _I need to go see Doctor Lake, _but somehow the signal between his brain and his tongue gets scrambled and what comes out instead is, “Can I call my aunt?”

Once it’s said, Peter realises he doesn’t want to correct himself. He can talk to Doctor Lake later — and he will, he tells himself, he _will — _but right now, all he wants is to hear a friendly voice, disconnected from all of this.

Carl sighs, looks at his watch, and then looks back up to Peter. He’s not the most compassionate guy, but Peter must look more stressed than he thought, because Carl sighs again, heavier this time, and says, “Okay. Fifteen minutes ‘til the end of the session, then I’ll take you down. Good with you?”

Peter nods.

He spends the next fifteen minutes with his knee bouncing up and down under the table, pretending to finish colouring with his now-broken crayon, and sending smiles that don’t reach his eyes Janine’s way when she asks him if he’s sure he’s okay.

When the session ends, Carl dallies a bit, tidying away the charts he’d been working on, but as promised, he escorts Peter down to the main desk. Peter waits while he fetches May’s number from the directory, dialling on Peter’s behalf before handing over the receiver and moving down to the other end of the desk to give him some privacy. Peter presses the phone to his ear, winding his finger through the coils in the cord as he listens to the line ring.

_“Hello?” _May sounds a little breathless. There’s the sound of clattering over the line, like pots and pans maybe, and Peter wonders if he’s caught her in the middle of trying out a new recipe. Even though her cooking leave more than a lot to be desired, the thought that he’s not there for it makes him sad.

“Hey, May. It’s um, it’s me.”

_“Peter.” _A thump and a muffled curse. Rustling on the other end before May comes through clearer._ “Hey baby. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you today.”_

Her voice is warm, but still, Peter’s stomach clenches. “Oh. Oh, sorry. I can—”

_“No, no, honey, don’t be silly. You can call me any time, you know that. You just caught me by surprise is all. I’m currently wrestling with a casserole and it is _not_ going well. What’s new, huh?” _

May laughs, the sound bright and infectious. Peter tries to join in, but the mirth doesn’t quite eclipse the tight ache under his ribs and it comes out flat.

A pause. Too long to be comfortable.

_“Hello? Peter? Are you there?”_

“I’m here.”

_“You went quiet. Is everything all right, honey?”_

Peter closes his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, voice suddenly croaky. He clears his throat. “Yeah, sorry. I just… I wanted to hear your voice. Have you… um, what have you been up to?”

_“You mean aside from ruining a perfectly good Crock-Pot?”_

Peter’s laugh comes a little easier at that. “Mmm.”

_“Oh well, you know how it is,” _she begins, and then she proceeds to tell him all about her week. About the funding issues they’re having at the homeless shelter, and the characters that have taken up residence there. About the cat from upstairs, Toby, who keeps finding his way into their apartment via the fire escape, but who May enjoys the company of too much to keep the window closed. She tells him about everything and nothing, and Peter is content to let her talk, chiming in every now and again with a _yeah, _or a _hmm, _just to let her know he’s listening.

For the first time in a long time he doesn’t mind the avoidance of anything about where he is, or what’s going on in his head, doesn’t feel the usual tension in the conversation, just a gradual sense of ease as May’s voice fills his ears, chasing away the low-grade dread he’s been feeling as of late. It almost seems like no time at all before Carl is waving to get his attention, tapping at his watch, and reluctantly, Peter nods.

“May,” he says, “I’ve got to go. But, um, thank you.”

_“Of course, honey. Any time. I larb you.”_

Peter exhales a soft laugh. A genuine one this time. “Larb you too.”

_“Bye, honey.”_

Peter goes to return the phone to Carl, but as he does, May’s voice carries through the speaker once more.

_“Oh, wait! Wait!”_

Peter presses the receiver back to his ear. “Yeah?”

_“I’m proud of you. You know that, right?”_

Whatever good feelings the conversation has elicited thus far vanish in an instant. Peter’s stomach twists in on itself in shame, and he’s glad May isn’t able to see the way his face falls. Proud of him? Would she be, if she knew the horrible, selfish secret he was keeping?

His words feel like ash in his mouth, but he swallows down the guilt as he answers.

“Yeah, May. I know.”

* * *

There is movement in Peter’s room again that night, but it isn’t Tony Stark, or any other impossible visage coming to torment him. No, it’s just Charlotte, crawling around on the wall above his head.

Honestly, Peter has no idea if the tiny spider that makes an appearance every now and again is actually the _same_ spider — even in his imagination, after being bitten by one and gaining all those abilities, he’d never been able to tell them apart, much to Ned’s disappointment — but it gives him a little comfort to think maybe it is. Kind of like having a silent, watchful friend.

“Hey, girl. Kind of a weird time for you to be out and about, isn’t it?”

Charlotte, true to form, doesn’t answer, and Peter decides to count that as a win. He figures if spiders start talking to him, that’s when he’ll know he’s truly lost it.

Since the rec room, he’s heard no more phantom voices, but he isn’t naïve enough to think that that had been the end of it. He is, however, naïve enough to hope.

He watches Charlotte wander aimlessly for a few minutes before she turns and makes a beeline for the ceiling. Up and up and up she crawls, and then she’s gone, disappearing through the join of a tile.

“Bye, then,” Peter murmurs after her, wondering if he’s truly lost it, anyway.

* * *

Despite the overnight reprieve following the incident in the rec room and his phone call with May, Peter can’t truthfully say he’s surprised when things take a turn for the worse.

As soon as he wakes, he can tell something has changed, and that only becomes clearer as the day progresses. With increasing frequency, he begins to notice little whispers — sometimes his name, sometimes just half-words that make no sense, fragments of a sentence. He catches flashes of a figure in the corner of his eye too many times to count, but never for long enough to define. The occurrences become impossible to dismiss or explain away. He struggles to sleep at all, and the resulting tiredness only makes everything worse.

“Peter,” he hears when he’s brushing his teeth, catching a brief glimpse of a neatly-groomed goatee when his eyes fly up to the mirror; “Kid,” floats to him while he’s in the middle of talking to Karen, and he tries not to flinch; “—isten to me,” comes from right next to his ear on his way back to his room, nearly making him fall on his ass in fright.

“Please leave me alone,” he pleads into the quiet when there is no one else around to hear him, “please stop.” But it makes no difference.

Peter knows he should tell someone — there’s no disputing that — but now that it’s gotten to this stage, he’s not only reluctant to, but _afraid_. What if they find out this has been going on for over a week and he didn’t say anything? What if they make him up his meds again, and he goes back to wandering around like an extra from The Walking Dead? Worst of all, what if all of this delays his release?

The anxiety of what might happen if he tells is almost as bad as the anxiety of seeing and hearing things that aren’t there, so against his better judgement, Peter keeps his mouth shut. He keeps quiet. He tells himself that it’s not even all that bad. And really, it’s not like anything is actually happening, anyway. It’s all just fleeting impressions of somethings. It’s no big deal. It’s nothing he can’t handle.

And then all of a sudden, it is.

* * *

Peter stands behind Robbie in the lunch line, trying not to bounce his leg or make it obvious that he is scanning the room with his eyes while he waits to be served. It’s become a habit as of late, for obvious reasons, but Peter does his best to be discreet about it. He knows it doesn’t look good.

It’s leek and potato soup for lunch for the third day in a row today, which he can only assume is due to the hospital having an abundance of produce leftover from harvesting the plants that the lower-security patients are encouraged to care for in the grounds. Peter and Janine had watched them digging up the garden from the window a couple of weeks ago and both tried to recall how long it had been since either of them had been outside. Needless to say that conversation had ended quickly.

Soup might be a strange meal for mid-June, but Peter doesn’t mind, even if it is getting repetitive. He’s always thought of soup as a comfort food of sorts.

Others, however, aren’t quite so forgiving.

“Yay, more beige,” he hears murmured from behind him, and for a second, Peter forgets the anxiety that is a constant, throbbing hum through his body as he tries not to snort at the scathing look the woman on the other side of the counter sends down the line to Janine. She tuts as she places a bowl on Robbie’s tray.

Peter turns his head. He looks past Dai, who is standing directly behind him, to Janine, who is standing behind him. When she sees him looking, she just grins and sticks up a thumb. Peter half-heartedly rolls his eyes.

“Next,” comes a call from ahead, and Peter faces forwards again, slides his tray along the rail.

“Thanks,” he says when the woman puts his bowl on his tray, and she gives him a “you’re welcome, hon,” and a warm smile in return. She always does; Peter really should have asked her name by now.

He grabs a dinner roll from the basket and turns to follow Robbie to the table and—

“Kid.”

—he startles, stumbles back into Dai. The tray falls out of his hands and clatters to the ground, hot soup splattering up the legs of his sweatpants. That’s the least of Peter’s worries, though; Tony Stark is standing right in front of him.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Dai shouts, shoving Peter hard between his shoulders and eliciting a “Hey!” from both Janine, and Martinez, who is seated across the room.

“Sorry,” Peter wheezes, trying to counteract his momentum as the push sends him closer to the image of Tony — more solid and more real than he has ever appeared before. Peter closes his eyes tightly, just trying to breathe. “Sorry. Sorry.”

_It’s not real. It’s not real_.

Except when he opens his eyes again, nothing has changed. Tony Stark is still standing right in front of him.

_Tony Stark is standing right in front of him._

Frantic, Peter twists around, takes in Janine, who is staring at him with confusion and concern, Dai, who just looks pissed, and Martinez, who has left his seat and is heading over, eyeing both Peter and the mess on the floor cautiously. They’re all looking at him — _just _at him.

“I know you can hear me,” Tony says, and Peter’s head whips back around.

_Still there_.

His throat shrinks down to the width of a straw. He shakes his head. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

Tony takes a step forward, urgent. “Pete, please, _listen_ to me. I’m trying to help you. This isn’t—”

“Stop,” Peter gasps, covering his ears and staggering backwards, staggering to the side, feeling his feet slide in the rapidly-cooling soup staining the tiles as he tries to put distance between himself and the apparition. “Don’t. Don’t.”

It’s not real, Tony isn't here — Peter knows that. And yet as he scrambles away, the man begins to follow him all the same.

“Kid, hold it a second. Let me—”

“No. No, no, no, just leave me alone. Leave me alone. Go away, please!”

“What’s going on?” asks Martinez, somewhere close by on Peter’s left. “Peter, hey.”

Peter hears the question, but he can’t answer. He knows he’s making a scene, knows there’s no hiding this now, but all of this is secondary to the moment. His entire world has narrowed down to Tony, who is still coming after him and still talking, words masked only by Peter’s own litany of ‘_no’_s and ‘_please’_s and _‘go away’_s.

“Spidey’s freaking out,” Dai tells Martinez.

“Dai, stop it!” snaps Janine.

And then Tony’s voice: “Pete, _look_ at me.”

Peter shakes his head, eyes squeezing closed. He can’t breathe. He feels like he’s going to be sick. It’s too much stimulation, too much noise. Too much, too much, too much. Something touches his arm and he jerks away violently. People are shouting. His skull feels like it’s going to split in two. Something warm and wet bursts over his upper lip and he’s blind and he’s deaf and he can’t feel his legs or anything at all other than _pain _and then—

It’s over.

He can feel his chest shuddering up and down with the effort of catching his breath. He’s slumped against something warm and solid. Something that’s holding him up. Something that’s saying, “Okay. You’re okay, man, you’re all right.”

It takes a moment or three or four to realise it’s Martinez.

“Wh...what?” Peter breathes, blinking spots out of his vision. He can taste the sharp tang of blood in his mouth and struggles to think of where that could have come from.

“We just had a little incident, but it’s fine. You’re okay.”

With that, the memories come flooding back in. Even though his head is still spinning, Peter finds himself twisting frantically, looking about the room. There’s no sign of Tony, or anyone else, actually. There is, however, Davis, hovering a few feet away, and Croft, standing uncomfortably close.

It’s then Peter sees the glint of light flashing off of the sharp point of a syringe, and he recoils, only succeeding in leaning further into Martinez’ hold.

“No,” he mumbles. _Not this, not again._ “No, please. Please, ‘m sorry. I didn’t… didn’t…” But he can already feel that it’s too late, can already feel the unnatural heaviness flooding his limbs, weighing down his eyelids and slowing his heart and his thoughts.

“It’s all right. Just relax, buddy. You’re gonna be fine,” says Martinez as Peter slumps against him.

Things fade out for a while after that.

When they fade back in, Peter is lying on his bed, blinking lazily up at the swirling ceiling of his room. He has no idea how much time has passed, but the dim orange glow bathing the wall across from the window suggests it is late afternoon or early evening.

He’s not pinned down with restraints like he was the last time he woke up feeling like this, but he’s on enough tranquilisers that he might as well be. His body feels like lead, like his skin is filled with heaps of wet sand instead of muscle and bone.

He groans, a weak, pitiful sound.

“Pete? Kid?”

The voice pulls Peter’s hazy focus to his right. There’s someone standing there, haloed by the amber light of the setting sun. Goatee, glasses, a band tee — Peter blinks at the unfocused image of Tony Stark, once, slowly, before letting his eyes slide away.

“You’re not real,” he says, or rather he tries to — it just comes out in an unintelligible slur.

He can’t make out the apparition’s features to see its reaction to that, but he feels the shape shift closer, until it is hovering over him at his bedside.

“Christ, kid.”

Peter cringes at the anguish in the voice, at how authentic it sounds. Despite the dulling of the drugs the sudden pain under his ribs is sharp. He closes his eyes, turns his face away — not only because he doesn’t want to have to look at the fake Tony, doesn’t want to hear him, but also because he’s just so damn tired. He knows it won’t be long until the lethargy and apathy shifts to nausea. He just wants to sleep while he can.

Though he would give anything for it to be under better circumstances and not due to the crushing weight of a cocktail of pharmaceuticals, for the first proper time in days, that’s exactly what he does.

Later, he will remember the familiar pressure of a warm hand on the crown of his head, the faint impression of a calloused thumb sweeping a lock of hair back from his forehead, but he will dismiss these things as what they are: the wishful manifestations of a lonely and unstable mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!!
> 
> You can find me under the same handle on tumblr: forensicleaf


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to seekrest for reading over, as always!

  
The nausea hits Peter at some point in the middle of the night. He stumbles to the bathroom on unsteady legs, and spends the next hour, hour and a half, two hours, alternating between heaving into the toilet and wiping off his hot, sweat-soaked face with the washcloth in the sink. 

No one is there to help him, this time. This time there is no one to reassure him or rub small circles on his back while the drugs work their way out of his system. There is no one there to wipe away the tears that are squeezed out onto his cheeks as his stomach spasms over and over. There is no one to tell him it’s all going to be okay even though it’s hard to see things ever being okay again. Peter is alone.

Alone, he sits, and alone, he endures. Once his stomach is mostly empty and exhaustion has finally overshadowed any residual nausea, he rests his arm across the toilet basin to pillow his head and drifts off right there on the bathroom floor. The sleep he falls into is not a restful one, legs sprawled beneath him as they are and neck angled awkwardly, but the fragile stretches of unconsciousness are at least a brief reprieve from the misery that has settled over him like a heavy fog at that point — a misery that even in this state, Peter knows is of no one’s but his own making.

If he’d just told someone what was going on — the way he promised he would — he wouldn’t be here right now, sweating and shaking and half-delirious on the bathroom floor. If he hadn’t been so afraid of seeking help he would be sleeping soundly in his bed tonight, instead of reliving one of the worst experiences of his life on his own, in the dark, watching the walls drip around him. 

But he’d told no one, so here he is, alone and afraid anyway.

_ My fault_, he thinks as he dips under again. _ My fault. _

A gentle shaking of his shoulder rouses him.

“C’mon, Parker, up you get.”

The voice is deep. Peter blinks, twisting his stiff neck to look up at its owner. For a long few seconds, he just stares at the dark shape silhouetted by the emergency lights of the hallway. A name makes its way to the tip of his tongue, but it evaporates as his vision resolves in the darkness and he sees with a strange mix of relief and disappointment that the person standing over him is just Davis. 

“You can’t sleep here, pal,” Davis says. “C’mon, let’s get you back to bed.”

It takes longer than it should for Peter to process the words, but he accepts the hand that’s offered, allowing it to pull him to his feet and guide him out of the bathroom, wrapped firmly around his upper arm. He does his best to maintain his equilibrium as they walk, but the reality is that it’s mostly Davis’ grip that keeps him upright — something that becomes undeniably apparent when Peter’s legs hit the edge of the mattress and he drops down heavily.

He sways where he sits. Though the sick feeling from the last couple of hours has more or less passed now, everything around him continues to spin, his vision distorting like a funfair mirror. He feels wretched.

“‘m sorry,” he mumbles.

Davis snorts. “Don’t be. It’s just the meds. Happens all the time.”

“No, not…” Peter frowns. “I meant...sorry for...for...” He knows what he wants to say, but the words just aren't there and it’s too hard to try and find them. He lets the sentence hang.

“What, yesterday?”

“Mm.”

“Oh,” Davis says after a moment. “Well, that’s all right, too. Nothing to be sorry about.”

“‘d I hurt anyone?”

“Nah, man. All noses got out of there with no touch-ups this time. A shame for Martinez, but whatcha gonna do?” He pats Peter’s shoulder. “You’re good. Here, you need some water?”

Peter shakes his head, but that turns out to be a bad idea. It makes everything start to spin worse than it already was and he exhales hard, feeling his chin start to drop.

“Whoa. All right, pal, how about you lie down, huh?” says Davis, and Peter, suddenly feeling like he’s on a carousel, is more than happy to oblige. He lets gravity do its thing. The moment his cheek presses into the pillow, he taps out like a light. 

He doesn’t dream.

When he wakes again, the sun is peeking through the grating on his window. The angle of the light hitting the wall tells him it is morning, and early. 

Peter blinks at the yellow beams for a moment, feeling his brain gradually start to come back online, rebooting its systems. He begins to take stock of his body. He feels… okay, he thinks. Reasonably so, at least. The sedation has worn off quicker this time than it did the last, leaving only a slight throbbing behind his eyes and a dry, chemical taste in his mouth, both of which are unpleasant, but bearable. 

What isn’t bearable, however, is the memory of why he was sedated in the first place, sharper now that Peter’s mind isn’t dulled so much by the drugs. The shame that comes along with it slams into him so solidly that he has to squeeze his eyes shut against the sensation, and he almost wishes someone would jab with another syringe so he wouldn’t have to face this. 

He wants to forget; he can’t forget. 

For a long time he lies there staring up at the ceiling, smothered by a self-pity he knows is wholly-undeserved. The urge to wallow in it is strong, but Peter can’t allow himself to. If he does he’ll end up falling into a pit he can’t climb out of, and he’s already spent enough of his time here doing exactly that. 

He climbs out of bed instead.

It’s barely dawn, too early to go and ask for shower supplies even if his door were unlocked, but the feel of cotton against his skin, damp after hours of sweating out pharmaceuticals, has now become a pressing issue, not to mention the smell that goes along with it. Peter heads into the bathroom and makes do with just water, rinsing through his hair and over his skin under the hot spray. He feels at least a little less gross when he emerges ten minutes later dressed in a clean set of clothes, but a little more tired in exchange — the heat and the steam of the shower reminding his body that the rest he’d gotten through the night wasn’t actually all that restful. 

With heavy eyes, he climbs back into bed, once-again conscious of the wall across from him now that his head is clearer. He eyes it for a moment, wary, and then he draws the blanket up over his head so he won’t be tempted to look any longer. 

He huddles under the covers, tries not to think too much, and, quicker than anticipated, lets sleep pull him back under. 

The next time he wakes, he is not alone. 

He sees the fuzzy outline of a dark haired man sitting in a chair to his right, and his stomach lurches, hard, before he realises it’s just Doctor Lake. 

Then his stomach lurches for an entirely different reason.

Lake’s face is impassive as always, but there is the faint impression of a frown visible in the lines around his eyes. “Good morning,” he says evenly as Peter pushes himself up to sitting. “How are you feeling?”

Peter swallows. His head is clear now, fogged now only by the lingering fingers of sleep which are quickly receding in the face of what’s coming. His limbs ache, but not terribly. 

“Okay,” he says. 

A quick look to the door confirms it’s guarded, and Peter looks back to Lake, wary. It’s been a long time since anyone has felt the need to stand watch. A long time since he’s been made to feel dangerous. His stomach twists. He has a vague memory of asking Davis in the night, but he asks again now:

“Did I hurt someone?”

To his relief, Doctor Lake smiles, though the edges of it are strained. “No,” he confirms. “You knocked over a chair or two, made a bit of a mess, but no, you didn’t hurt anybody.”

Peter exhales. Shaky. “That’s good.”

“Yes.”

In that word, a shadow of the consequences he’d be facing if he had. Hair rises on the back of his neck. 

“I didn’t… I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Peter says. “Any of it.”

“You remember it, then?”

Cautiously, Peter nods.

“Do you feel like it’s something you’re up for discussing with me right now?” 

Peter would actually prefer to never have to think about it ever again, but that’s not how things work here. He learned that a long time ago. He says, “Okay.”

“It seems to me that you were talking to someone,” Lake says. “Seeing something.” It’s not a question, but the question in it is clear.

_ Who? _

It’s the moment where Peter should tell the doctor about Tony, but surprising to even himself, that’s not what he does. 

It’s not like it was when he had meant to ask Carl if he could talk to Doctor Lake and blurted out May’s name instead — accidental, driven by longing. No, this time, the shift is deliberate, though just as unexpected. As Peter opens his mouth to tell the doctor what happened, something deep within his bones whispers to him, _ don’t _, and Peter, though he isn’t entirely sure why, listens. 

“It was the vulture guy.”

Lake’s expression doesn’t so much as twitch. He holds Peter’s gaze, and Peter has to force himself not to look away from the suspicion brewing in the doctor’s eyes.

“The vulture guy?”

Peter swallows. Nods. “Yeah.”

“The same one who you believed to be responsible for the ferry incident?”

Again, Peter nods.

“This… _ vulture. _Is he someone you have been thinking about a lot lately?”

Peter can feel colour creeping up his neck. He’s never been a good liar. He knows the deceit is always written all over his face. He hopes Lake can’t see it. “I had a bad dream about him the other night and I guess, um… I guess it freaked me out.”

“And you didn’t think to bring this up in our last session?”

“It… I thought it was just a dream.”

Lake doesn’t seem particularly impressed with that answer, but he doesn’t push it any further. “Have there been incidents aside from yesterday’s?”

“Yes,” Peter answers semi-honestly.

“Are you seeing or hearing anything unusual now?”

“No.”

Lake leans back in his chair, runs a hand along his jaw. He looks at Peter. “I’ve watched back the footage from the cafeteria. You seemed quite distressed. Can I ask why that was, what this man was saying to you?”

Peter hesitates. He’s aware that if he continues to follow the path he’s started on, he’s going to trip himself up eventually, but he’s come too far with this to backtrack now without dashing any trust he’s managed to build up with the doctor over the past few weeks. 

What is it Natasha had always told him? That the best lies are based in truth — ”_ easier to remember that way, жук. And easier to sell.” _It doesn’t matter whether all those training sessions had only happened in Peter’s head, the lesson is useful now. Change the name, keep the details the same. Stick to the truth in all ways but one. 

“He—”

Almost immediately, though, he realises the truth presents its own problem: what _ had _ Tony been saying? It all happened so fast, and with all the terror and the voices competing to be heard, with the pain that had speared through his head and the drugs that took him away from everything in the aftermath, Peter honestly can’t remember. 

He frowns. Thinks.

“He was just…just trying to get my attention. That’s all,” he says. Of course, even with his foggy memory he knows it wasn’t _ all _, but it feels close enough to the truth that the heat crawling across his cheeks slows its advance.

Lake leans forward, eyes bright. “Do you know why?”

Like a flash through Peter’s mind: _ I’m trying to help you. _

“No,” says Peter.

“Did he ask you anything? Did he tell you to do anything?”

A sense of foreboding sweeps over Peter at the intensity in Lake’s words, at the sharpness in his eyes — one he can't explain. 

“Like...what?” When Lake doesn’t answer, he shakes his head, says quietly, “No. No, I didn’t give him the chance. I knew he wasn’t real, that’s why I was trying to get away.”

Lake’s face relaxes then, whatever Peter thought he’d seen brewing in the man’s expression sloughing away quickly enough that he almost wonders if it was ever there at all.

“I’m very proud of you, Peter. That must have been incredibly difficult, but that you were able to differentiate between reality and illusion shows great progress. You’ve come a long way.”

Guilt stabs through Peter at the praise, undeserved in the face of the lie. Guilt, but not regret. Quietly, he says, “Thank you.”

“What I would say, though,” Lake tells him, “is that it’s best not to interact with these hallucinations at all, even to try and distance yourself from them. The more you interact with them, the more power you give them over your life, your wellbeing. It’s best to try and ignore them, and of course, let me or another of the providers know if your symptoms are worsening again.”

“Okay,” Peter says, and Lake nods.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m hesitant to change your medication again, because aside from this small hiccup it appears to have been working as it should, but I would like to up the CBT sessions from twice a week to three, just to keep in touch with how you’re doing and to keep a handle on any further episodes. We’ll see how that goes, and then potentially look at a med adjust at a later date, okay?”

None of that sounds like a particularly great option for Peter, but extra CBT is definitely preferable to extra pills — that’s what he was so scared of, after all, the reason he let the events preceding yesterday’s go on for so long. 

“Yeah,” he says, “okay.”

The doctor stands to go, but pauses at the door as Peter says after him, “Um, Doctor Lake?”

Lake looks back expectantly.

“Is this… um, what happened, is it going to affect me getting out of here?”

The corners of Lake’s eyes crinkle kindly. “No, Peter. Our main concern at the time of the review would be whether or not you’re a danger to yourself or others. So far nothing that’s happened has led me to believe that you would be.”

“I’m not,” Peter says. “I won’t be.” The very thought of it makes him feel sick.

“Then there’s nothing to worry about other than getting well.” Lake smiles. “You’re doing great, Pete. Try not to be so hard on yourself.”

* * *

“Is everybody talking about it?” 

Peter feels brave enough to ask Karen this when she comes to escort him to social hour after a morning spent alone in his room. 

It’s the only thing he _ is _ feeling brave about; the thought of walking back into the cafeteria knowing that everyone waiting there today had also been there yesterday, that they had all seen him at such a low point, so exposed, sends his stomach churning something awful. 

He wonders what they must all think of him after witnessing him panicking, running from someone that wasn’t there, shouting at nothing. How is he going to be able to look any of them in the eye?

He thinks of Dai’s unkind sneer, of the sympathetic downturn of Janine’s lips, Robbie’s impassive gaze and he has to take a deep breath, focusing on the rhythm of his steps to distract himself from the inevitable.

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Karen says gently beside him. 

Peter feels his face colour, betraying his thoughts. “I know.”

They walk a little further. Peter can sense that Karen is weighing up her next words, trying to decide how best to approach his question. He wishes everyone would stop worrying so much about how he’s going to take things.

“It’s been a topic of conversation,” Karen says honestly after a moment, “but no one’s being unkind, if that’s why you’re worrying.” 

“I’m not.”

“Okay.”

Despite what Karen seems to think, whether or not anyone is going to make fun of him over what happened isn’t what’s occupying Peter’s thoughts or making his feet drag. He knows how to deal with teasing — he’s put up with Flash for as long as he can remember — what he doesn’t know how to deal with, however, is sympathy, especially when he doesn’t himself feel that he’s deserving of it. All the stares and whispers and empty platitudes after Ben died hadn’t made anything better, they had only cut into him like knives, pushed him out amongst the skyscrapers of the city with grief and rage in his heart and a red and blue sweatsuit on his back. 

Or, well, that’s the better version of events, anyway. 

Regardless, that’s not a course of action he can take now, and it makes him feel more trapped than he already is.

They reach the rec room. Everyone else is already there, and of course they all look up at his entrance. Peter tries to stand tall and tell himself that it’s not because they want to gawp or that they feel sorry for him, it’s just natural to look up when someone enters a room, but he feels his own gaze drop to the floor all the same. 

For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t head to the central table where Robbie and Janine sit. He heads instead to the sofa by the water cooler, curling up into the familiar corner where he intends to stay for the next two hours, hoping they pass quickly. 

No more than five minutes after that, a shadow crosses over him, and a body lands on the seat beside him with a soft flump.

“Hey,” says Janine. 

“Hi.”

“You’re sitting on his friend,” calls Dai from across the room, earning a swift glare from Janine and a stern _ Dai _from Karen. 

Janine shifts beside Peter, so her back is to the other sofa. “Ignore him.”

“I am,” Peter says. 

“He’s an ass.”

“I know.”

Silence. 

“So… I’m not actually sitting on anyone, right?” Janine says after a moment. Peter can tell she’s trying to lighten things up, but he isn’t ready for that yet. It just hurts. 

“Janine.”

“I’m just saying, if I need to move, I’m cool with that. I don’t want to intrude or anything.”

Peter doesn’t answer. 

“All right. I just wanted to see how you were doing?”

“How about I don’t want to talk about it?” Peter snaps. “How about this is none of your business?”

Janine goes quiet, then, on the breath of a bitter laugh: “Fuck off, Pete. You think you’re the only one who gets embarrassed about this shit? Grow up.”

Peter looks up, a heated retort on the tip of his tongue...and hesitates. He thinks of all the times he’s witnessed Janine fall victim to her compulsions, of the many needless flushes of red across her cheeks and the way she pushes through it all every time. 

He breathes out, steady. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

Janine glances sideways at him with narrowed eyes. “Of course I am,” she says. Then, “Do you want to play cards?”

* * *

The rest of the day passes with no incidents. It’s better by far than Peter was anticipating, given the events that preceded it, but he was never under any illusion that the ease would last. 

That night, just after rounds, when the room is dark and Peter is beginning to drift into sleep, he hears a noise. 

Dread curls deep in his gut even as he shoots up in bed without hesitation, curling deeper as he pinpoints the sound. 

There is a figure standing against the opposite wall. 

Peter’s heart gives a hard slam against his sternum. He glances over before he can stop himself, quickly glancing away again, focusing straight ahead.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” says Tony Stark.

Peter says nothing. He feels his hands going clammy, a cold sweat erupting over his skin. Tension radiates down his spine, like the limbs of a bow at full draw.

“Pete? Hello? You can hear me, right?”

_ No _, Peter thinks. _ No, I can’t. You’re not real. You’re not here. _He squeezes his eyes shut, as if by blocking out the room he can block out the manifestation, too. Will it away, somehow. He can’t; when he opens his eyes again, Tony is still hovering there on the edge of his vision.

“C’mon, kid,” Tony says. “The only thing I hate more than being handed stuff is being ignored. Especially when I’m on a timer. I just need you to give me something here so I know I’m on the right frequency.”

Peter doesn’t move.

“C’mon, kid. A glance, a nod, Wakandan salute, whatever, I’m not fussy. Actually, I am fussy, but I’m willing to make an exception here.”

“Go away,” Peter breathes.

“Ah ha, I knew you could hear me.”

Peter winces at his own stupidity. 

“I’m here to help you, Pete,” Fake Tony says. “I messed up last time, but I just want to talk, that’s all, I swear.”

_ Don’t engage, _that’s what Lake had said, _ engage and you give them power over you._ Peter clenches his jaw, hands tightening around the sheets beneath them. He thinks of May, he thinks of going home, he thinks of beating all of this crazy shit and eventually having some semblance of a normal life again — one where phantom billionaire superheros don’t hang around in his bedroom in the middle of the night. 

“Pete,” Tony persists. “Pete. Peter, kid, Underoos. Bud, I wasn’t kidding about the timer. Or about hating being ignored. I’m usually the one doing the ignoring and I gotta say, not a fan of the shoe being on the other foot. I’m learning something here today. Well done, the student has become the master.”

“Leave me alone,” Peter hisses against his better judgement. 

“No can do, not until you talk to me.”

“I’m not gonna talk to you.”

“Looks to me like you kind of already are.”

Now, finally, Peter’s head swivels. He glares at the figure standing over by the window. At the casual state of dress, the neatly-shaped beard, the wry smile — all of it almost mocking in its accuracy and familiarity. It fills him with a dark kind of resentment; how unfair that his subconscious could be so cruel.

Tony’s eyes are bright in the darkness, assessing, but when Peter meets them, they soften.

“Hey, kid.”

It’s like a punch to the gut — a blow deeper and more painful than anything Peter had imagined taking as Spider-man. All of his frustration washes away, a lump rising up so quickly in his throat in its place that he feels as if he is being choked, and for all he tries to swallow it down, the sensation still remains.

“You’re not real,” he says, barely a whisper. He knows it’s the truth and yet he can’t help how desperately he wishes it weren’t. How desperately he wishes this really were Tony, that he really were here.

“I’m real, Pete,” says Tony. “It’s me.” His voice is so, so gentle that Peter finds he can’t say a thing back, can only stare, hardly daring to breathe around the lump in his throat that won’t go away.

For a moment, just a moment, he dares to imagine this isn’t all in his head. He dares to let himself consider that everything that’s happened to him here has been a trick, and that someone has finally come to rescue him, to make everything better. 

And then, that moment ends.

That kind of thinking is only going to hurt him in the long run. Only going to make things harder.

“No,” Peter says. “You— I know you’re not...you’re not here. I’m just—”

“You’re not anything, kid.”

“I’m losing my mind. I’m—“

“No. I’m here, Pete, I promise,” Tony says. Then, “Well, not _ here _ here. It’s difficult to explain, I don’t— hmm.”

He rubs a thumb over his brow. Starts to pace.

“Look, obviously my last attempt at this left a lot to be desired. Zero points for subtlety and all that — what can I say, I have a tendency to not think things through. I was going to try to broach the subject a bit more gently this time, ease you in, but like I said, I don’t know how long I have and this is important so I’m just gonna come right out and say it.” 

Despite this declaration, here, Tony pauses. He looks Peter in the eyes, expression cautious. 

“Pete,” he says, “this isn’t real.”

Peter blinks. 

And then, he blinks again. 

“What?”

It comes out on a breath, quiet, thin, and yet somehow drawing all the air from Peter’s lungs along with it. 

“This isn’t real,” Tony repeats.

“What isn’t real?” 

Peter knows that he’s being stupid by asking. He’s being so completely stupid. He shouldn’t even be entertaining this. But Tony’s words and the sincerity with which they are delivered have stirred something within him. Something he thought long-dormant, something dangerous. 

His heart starts to drum against his ribs, fearful and hopeful.

“This place, kid. This...” Tony looks around at the little there is to look at in Peter’s sparse room. “What? Hospital?”

“Psych facility,” Peter clarifies quietly, watching Tony’s face darken at the words.

“_ Psych _ faci—“ Tony cuts off, furious. To himself: “Honestly, call a guy unstable _ one time. _Pete—”

“They said—“ Peter starts. He presses his lips together. It still hurts to say it. “They said I had a psychotic break. Um, delusions. Hallucinations. I—”

“No. Not a chance in hell, kid. I don’t know what crap they’re feeding you, but listen to me, all right? You’re not delusional. That’s complete crap. You’re not imagining me, and you’re not imagining anything else, either. This place? This is the lie. You gotta believe me on this one, bud, please.”

It’s said with such confidence that Peter almost does. He wants to. He wants to more than anything. What Tony is saying is everything he’s wanted to hear since he’d awoken that first day, disoriented and confused and alone. It’s _ everything._ But Peter is too cautious to let himself trust. In this place, up ‘til now, hope has only brought him pain. He can’t deal with any more.

Perhaps Tony senses his hesitation. He takes a step forward, purposeful. “Pete,” he says firmly, waiting until Peter looks up, until their gazes are locked and there is no room for misunderstanding, “you’re the smartest kid I know. You know your own head. You know when something’s not right, and this is not right. You are_ not _ crazy.”

Peter’s breathing quickens. There is nothing but truth in Tony’s eyes, and despite Peter’s reluctance, the conviction and certainty in his words are such that even after everything, Peter can’t help but feel the embers of the two begin to reignite within himself.

The sparks catch; flames fan into a fire. Once that happens, there’s no stopping it.

Adrenaline thrums through Peter’s blood, making his hands shake. This place isn’t real? He knew it. He_ knew _ it. He’d known it as he ran down hallway after hallway, desperately trying to reach an exit. He’d known it when Doctor Lake had first told him of his ‘diagnosis’, known it even as he’d reluctantly become complicit in his own medication — as sure of it still as he was sure of his own name. He’d known it even as his sight remained blurred and his lungs wouldn’t fill properly and his hands refused to stick. The knowledge that this place was _ wrong, _ that he didn’t belong here, had been the truth that had carried him through the darkness of those early days. To think he’d lost sight of that, that he had allowed himself to be told otherwise — allowed himself to _ believe _ otherwise, even for a moment — it fills him now with shame.

Under that shame, though, _ elation. _

Because finally, finally, he has a confirmation. He’s not mentally ill. He’s not a murderer. He doesn’t need drugs, or therapy, or to stay here any longer than he already has. He didn’t imagine Tony caring about him, and perhaps the most wrenching realisation of all — he’s _ Spider-man. _He’s really, truly Spider-man. He can help people. He can help himself. He can be more than he is, do something good again. Tony confirming everything he’d been so adamant of is almost like a dream, almost too good to be true.

And with that halting thought, the elation drains away.

_ Almost _ too good to be true? 

No, not almost; it _ is _ too good to be true. In fact, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Months of Peter being stuck in this place, months of being alone, isolated and afraid, months of being slowly worn down, forced to let go of everything that ever made him special, and _ now _ Tony shows up? _ Now, _Tony comes to tell him he was right all along? Just as he is finally starting to come out on the other side? 

“I don’t—” Peter wets his lips. “I don’t understand.”

“What’s that, kid?”

“If I'm not sick, why—_ how _ am I here? How are _ you _ here? You didn’t come in through the door.” 

Tony grimaces at that. Rubs at the back of his neck. “Pete, it’s...complicated.”

“Complicated,” Peter echoes.

“The wizard’s pulling some pretty big cosmic strings to swing these visits, which he did explain — or tried to, anyway, I’m about ninety-percent sure he was messing with me after he used the word _ chi._ As for the rest, I gotta tread lightly. I can’t— I don’t think I can tell you everything. It didn’t go so well before. You’re just gonna have to trust me.”

“Trust you.”

“Yeah Pete, trust.”

“I spoke to May,” Peter says, wary. “She was here. She told me to trust her, too.”

“That wasn’t May, kid.”

Peter’s face falls. Tony notices, backtracks.

“I know. I know that sounds nuts, but it wasn’t her. She’s here with me, worried sick. Your girlfriend, too.”

Peter’s heart follows the direction of his face, sinking straight into the floor. “Girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, looking at Peter strangely. “Michelle? Yay high, likes gruesome historical murders and mouthing off about the patriarchy? Has a tendency to — what?”

He pauses, frowning at Peter, who is shaking his head, a bitter scoff rising in his throat. 

“I knew it. You’re just in my head.” Peter’s voice is tight, his eyes squeezed shut against the moisture threatening to form there. He hates himself for how badly he wanted to believe it, how badly he still wants to believe it.

“I’m not in your head, kid” Tony says. “Well, I mean I am _ in _your head, but I’m not a product of it, if that’s what you’re getting at. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Devastation switches to anger in an instant. “Right,” Peter snaps, “sure. I’m dating MJ and May’s a pod person but even though I’m the only one who can see you, you’re real.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I _ am, _Pete,” Tony insists, growing frustrated in kind. Peter can see it in the set of his jaw and squaring of his shoulders. “Why are you making this so—“ He looks Peter hard in the eyes for a moment, and then seems to come to a decision. “All right, fuck it. Look, kid, this hospital, the people in it, all of it — it’s fake. You’re not really here; you’re lying in the medbay hooked up to about a million machines while we try and figure out how the hell to pull you out of all this without straight up killing you. This place is just a—“ 

But whatever Tony is trying to say is swallowed up by the sound of static, by a ringing in Peter’s ears and a plethora of black splodges that sweep across his vision. He feels himself begin to tilt. A pain shoots through his head, making him feel like his brain is about to start leaking out of his ears and—

“—ete! Kid can you hear me? You okay? You all right?”

Peter groans, leaning forward and cradling his skull between his palms. His hearing is off, like his head is submerged in water, but the worry in Tony’s voice rings through clear as day. What’s got him so concerned, Peter wonders. What happened? Everything is scrambled. Maybe he hit his head again? Gave himself another concussion? 

“‘kay,” he mumbles on reflex when Tony says his name again, although he feels anything but. “‘m okay. ‘m fine.” 

It takes a moment more for the confusion to clear, another for Peter to remember where he is and what’s going on. Despite the pain in his head easing, the clarity makes him feel even less okay than before. 

He opens his eyes and almost flinches back in surprise when he sees that Tony is now mere feet away, crouched in front of him with a pale face and his brows knitted together, eyes sweeping over Peter’s face, assessing. His gaze is scrutinising but distant, a look Peter recognises from days in the lab. It’s the way Tony gets when he’s trying to solve a problem, gears turning behind the curtain. 

“Okay, yeah. That’s what I thought,” Tony says after a moment, mouth turning down as he reaches his conclusion — apparently one he’s not fond of.

Peter blinks. He still feels a little dazed. “Wh— what?”

Tony runs a hand over his face with a frustrated sigh. The emergency lights glint off the gold of the prosthesis. “Can’t get into specifics. There’s some kind of block filtering me out and doing” — he points at Peter’s face, at the blood Peter now realises is smeared all over his upper lip — _“that _when I try. It’s what happened before, too. In the cafeteria.” He winces. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

“Oh,” Peter says, because he doesn’t know what else he can say. He swipes under his nose, frowns at the streak of red on the back of his hand. “Um, okay?”

Tony stands, running his hands through his hair as he begins to pace. “We’re gonna have to rethink this,” he says. “I told Strange this was going to be a problem, but does he listen to me? No. I swear to god...” 

He seems to be speaking more to himself than to Peter as he walks the length of the room, mumbling about douchebags in capes while Peter sits there trying to stem the tricking from his nose and feeling more and more like he’s on the cusp of an existential crisis with every passing moment. 

Two lives now that he’s missing memories of, fake hospitals, astral projecting mentors, booby-traps in his head... This is insane. Or he’s insane. Or he’s actually not, which just makes this all the more insane. 

“Mr Stark,” he says, interrupting Tony’s mutterings. Tony looks up, blinking like he’d almost forgotten Peter was there. The idea of that is so absurdly ironic that it startles a brief, almost-dazed laugh from Peter. “What the fuck is happening?”

Tony tilts his head. His eyes narrow. “You know, I’d be inclined to pull a Cap and call you out on that one, but I think it was probably appropriate given the situation.”

“What even is the situation?”

Tony scowls. “Yet another instance of my past coming back to bite me in the ass,” he says. “Or rather, you. I’m sorry kid. Truly. This prison was never meant for you.”

Peter searches Tony’s face carefully. “This isn’t real?” he asks.

“This isn’t real.”

“I’m in the medbay?”

Tony’s eyes tighten. “For two weeks now.”

That presents its own set of questions, but there is one that Peter finds far more pressing — one that to him means everything. He’s almost afraid to ask it, scared of having his hopes dashed, but if they aren't… if they aren’t... 

He takes a shaky breath.

“I’m...Am I Spider-man?”

He can feel his heart fluttering against his sternum as he waits for the answer, like a bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage. The sound of it is loud in his ears but Tony’s voice is louder. 

“Yeah, kid,” he says. “You’re Spider-man.”

The cage bursts open. The bird soars.

Peter looks down at his hands. They look no different, but suddenly everything is. He pictures sticking his fingers to a wall and climbing, climbing higher and higher until there is no higher to go. He pictures leaping, pressing his fingers into his palm and swinging up and into the sky. He pictures being free. 

A smile, more genuine than any he can remember recently finds its way onto his face. Exhilaration chases through his veins.

He’s going to get out of here. He’s going to get back to his real life. All of this will just be a bad memory. 

He lifts his head—

“How do I—?” 

—and stops. There’s no one there. 

That bright, warm feeling in his chest grows dull, cold. As still and empty as the room around him. Peter’s smile falls.

“Mr Stark?” he whispers.

Silence.

“Tony?” he tries, already knowing he won’t get a response and hoping anyway.

As predicted, his voice trails out into the empty room, and none answer him back.

He sits in the dark for a long while, thinking, and then cautiously, he presses his palm flat against the bedsheets. 

_ Stick, _he thinks, willing it so with every fiber of his being.

It doesn’t.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your patience! I hope you’re all doing well.
> 
> Please leave me a little comment to let me know what you think :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to [seekrest](%E2%80%9C) for reading this over, as always, and also to [blondsak](%E2%80%9C) for being my third set of eyes now we’re getting into the nitty gritty! You are both so supportive and I’m so grateful to you!
> 
> Thanks also to all of you lovely readers for being so kind and patient during the long wait for this. I hope it doesn’t disappoint!

  
If Peter had to put a name to the feeling that consumes him in the wake of Tony’s visit, it would be this: _confused. _Arguably there are more questions now than there ever were before, and fewer answers than Peter would like to have — if the vague, half-explanations he got can even be called that. 

The entire night after his conversation with Tony is spent trying to untangle everything in his head — the medbay, Doctor Strange, Tony appearing and disappearing, everything here at Newhaven feeling so real despite the insistence otherwise. Peter tries to make sense of it all. He _can’t _make sense of it all. For hours, he alternates between working his brain into knots with theories so intricate and convoluted he loses the threads of them, and cautiously touching his palm to various surfaces around the room, just in case anything has changed. All the while he watches for Tony’s return, hoping for more of an explanation; all the while, he gets none. 

When day finally breaks, Peter has had no return visit, no more sleep, and is no further forward with understanding what is going on, but despite all this, when he climbs out of bed, when he runs the routine of showering and dressing in clean clothes, when he makes his way down for breakfast, it is with a newfound sense of purpose. 

Something has changed. 

There’s a tentative thrill in the air, a whisper of promise. For so long, Peter’s days have been absent of that, a future on a set course of medication and hospitals and invasive therapy offering little to aspire to — why spend time envisioning what could be when there’s only one way things _can _be? He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have drive, determination. To be curious. It feels like drawing back a curtain after a long night.

Peter isn’t stupid, of course; he knows he can’t yet be sure that Tony’s appearance had been anything more than a figment of his imagination. Even if it was real, there are so many aspects of what was said that hadn’t made sense. It would be foolish to believe, maybe more so to hope. But even knowing all of this, Peter feels the pull of the rabbit hole. If Tony is _ri__ght_, and all of this is some kind of fabrication, a sort of trip for his consciousness while his body lies still in the medbay, doesn’t he owe it to himself to try and find out? Doesn’t he owe it to Tony, too, and the others that might be waiting for him on the other side? The _life _that might be waiting for him on the other side?

He thinks so.

So, try and find out, he does. 

Outwardly, he tries not to let on that anything is different. He gets up when the orderlies come to do the morning rounds, he still takes his pills, goes to therapy, attends social hour, still does exactly what he’s told to do when he’s told to do it. But while his body may be compliant, his mind is far from it. Suspicious and searching for answers, everything is viewed through a new lens now; every gentle _sweetheart _from Karen, every casual expression of friendship from Janine, every wave of professional concern from Lake, it all takes on an edge that wasn’t there before. Peter pays attention to the smallest details, looks everywhere for cracks, searching for the flaw that will be the proof this place is something other than what it seems. The proof that, like Tony said, it isn’t real.

_Paranoid_, he imagines Doctor Lake would say if he knew what was going on in his head, and maybe he is. But it doesn’t feel that way. To Peter, it feels like working a problem. Like testing a hypothesis: watching, observing, collecting all the data he needs to come to an accurate conclusion. 

He just isn’t sure yet what that conclusion is going to be.

All day he watches, observes, and as he climbs into bed that evening, heavy with the exhaustion that comes from hours of persistent alertness, he can’t bring himself to feel entirely disappointed that he has found nothing that might substantiate Tony’s claims. 

Instead, he feels a strange sense of satisfaction: even though he had to sit through another session with Lake, careful to censor his contributions to the conversation, even though he had to listen to Dai’s horrible comments at lunch, and choke down those awful tablets, today hasn’t been a bad day. Today, for the first time in a long time, Peter has felt somewhat like himself again.

It’s a feeling he doesn’t want to lose.

Anticipation draws around him like the blanket he slings over his shoulders as he settles down for the night, his eyes locking on the wall across from his bed. As they do, he realises that without consciously deciding to, he is waiting for Tony to return.

Does this mean he believes him? No, he’s been through too much here to trust that blindly. But he can’t deny the spark that has ignited within him at the possibility of another life, a better life. He wants to hear more. 

So he sits on his bed, and he waits.

And he waits.

And he waits.

* * *

  
On Saturday, the rec room is awash with the buzz of quiet chatter. 

Around it, the patients are talking and laughing with their families while Julie, Carl and Anil weave between tables with subtle but watchful eyes. The murmur of private conversation fills the air, though none of it coming from Laura’s table, where she sits quiet as ever across from her solemn-faced parents, and none of it from Robbie’s, either, where he and a boy who looks similar enough to him that he might be a twin have their heads bent low over a tablet, wordlessly engaging with whatever is on the screen. 

Peter didn’t know Robbie was a twin; he’ll have to ask about it.

In the far corner, Dai sits at a table with his father. The ever-present Rubix cube is conspicuously absent, but the lack of distraction seems to have done nothing for Dai’s personable skills, even with his own family. It seems like it’s Dai’s father who is carrying most of the weight of the conversation, though, familiar with the other boy’s quirks by now, Peter doesn’t find that at all surprising.

“Are you all right, honey? You seem distracted.”

Peter’s eyes have drifted to Janine, sitting on the next table over and squeezing her brother Sam tightly around the waist, the little boy squirming and giggling on her lap. He pulls them away now, turning to his own visitor. “Hmm?”

Across the table from him, May’s eyebrows pinch together, the motion as familiar to Peter as breathing. “Distracted,” she repeats. “You. Is everything okay?”

Peter blinks. “Oh. Oh right. Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was _saying _it’s your birthday soon. I know there’s not a lot you’re allowed to have here but have you thought about what you might like? Is there anything you want?”

_To be home. To not be here. _“Um. No, not really.”

May’s mouth twists unhappily at that. “Nothing, honey? I can see what Ned’s doing if you like? I know it’s been a while since you guys saw each other, and I know it didn’t go so well last time, but he still calls me to see how you’re doing. He misses you. Maybe he could come visit again?”

“Ned’s been here?” Peter asks, sitting up straighter in his chair.

“Of course, honey. He’s your best friend.”

Peter’s heart clenches a little at the thought of seeing Ned again, but the idea of his friend seeing him here, like this, even though it might not be real, sends his stomach churning. 

“Uh, no. I don’t think—”

A bright peal of laughter draws Peter’s attention across the room again. Janine has moved on to tickling Sam now, her deft fingers playing along his ribs as he squeals. She’s laughing too, while her mother rolls her eyes with a fond smile. 

“Will you stop winding him up, Nina, please?” Peter hears the woman say. “It’s going to be me who has to deal with the fallout and you know how he gets.”

“Can’t help it,” says Janine brightly. “He’s so squishy and I miss his little face.”

Peter watches with a curious fascination as she proceeds to take said little face between her palms and press little kisses all over. Watches the way Sam sticks out his tongue in mock disgust and the way their mom’s face turns soft. It’s so domestic, lived in, a whole little world that Peter knows next to nothing about, as all of the gatherings around the various tables are. He is aware that he’s staring, but he can’t look away. How could it not be real, he wonders for the thousandth time. How could _they _not be real?

“She’s pretty.”

Peter startles, head whipping back round to May. “What?” he says. He follows her line of sight over again to Janine. “Oh. No. _No. _I’m not— I don’t—”

“Relax,” May says, tapping one of his suddenly-flushed cheeks, “I’m just teasing. You’re too easy.”

Peter scowls. “Ha.”

“Seriously Peter, are you okay? You seem...I don’t know, a little spacy?” She presses her lips together. Looks down at her hands. “Did...did they change your medication again, honey? Is that it?”

The hesitation stings, as does May’s shift to a more cautious tone, but Peter tries to brush it off.

“No,” he says. “Sorry, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. Just tired, I guess.”

He neglects to fill in the reason why he didn’t get any sleep, which is that he was watching the wall at the foot of his bed, as he has every night for the past three, wondering if it would be the one when Tony would reappear. 

It wasn’t.

Determination and drive aside, the more time has slipped past, the more that day has turned to night has turned to day again with no return visit, the more Peter has begun to doubt. The more he has begun to feel some of that foolishness slip in. Sitting here with May directly across from him he feels even more foolish still. From the crinkles at the corners of her eyes to the whisper of grey threaded through her hair, from the way she calls him _honey _to the warmth of her hands around his, down to every last detail, this is his aunt. He feels ashamed for even considering it might not be. 

And yet…

_Work the problem. _

“May,” he says. Bites the inside of his lip. 

“Yeah, honey.”

“Do you… do you remember when we used to go to the zoo?”

May reels back in mock whiplash from the sudden change of topic. Her expression turns bemused. “The zoo? What’s got you bringing that up?”

Peter shrugs. “I don’t know. I was just thinking about it, I guess.”

He’s been thinking about it a lot, actually. Not the zoo, exactly, but about things that only May — the _real _May — would know. Things that couldn’t be googled or tracked down on somebody’s Instagram. Something that could maybe tell him once and for all if this May is really _his _May. Put the whole thing to bed.

“Okay,” May says slowly. “Well, it would be pretty hard to forget. We were there almost every weekend for… god, I don’t even know how many months.” She smiles. “That was your nature phase.”

Peter remembers it well. He’d gotten a book filled with photographs of all manner of exotic animals for his eighth birthday and decided shortly after that that his life goal was to be a zookeeper, or a marine biologist, or a nature photographer, depending on the day. Before the spark burned out and he moved onto the next big fixation, he had begged May and Ben to take him to the zoo in Corona Park every chance he got, spending hours dragging the two of them round the various enclosures and snapping pictures with the junior digital camera that had been an accompanying present to the book. He’d loved seeing the lions and the monkeys and the lizards, but he always loved one exhibit more than all the others. May would know that. 

“Right,” he says, watching her cautiously. “I liked the tigers.”

“You did,” May agrees, and Peter tenses. 

His heart gives a hard thud in the moment before she continues, “But the penguins were your favourite. You liked the way they walked. Honestly I was worried one of us would turn our back one day and end up finding you in the enclosure, the way you used to press your nose up to the glass to watch them.” 

That tension dissipates as Peter lets out a heavy breath, but it’s not quite relief that takes its place. Is it disappointment? Peter isn’t sure. Whatever it is, it sets off an ache deep in his chest, a waver in his voice as he says, “Right. Yeah. Ben used to call me—”

“Pingu Parker,” May finishes with a grin. “Oh wow, I’d forgotten about that. Always teasing, that man.”

Peter tries to return her smile, but he doesn’t quite manage it. _Crazy, after all. _His throat feels tight.

Like a dimming bulb, the mirth disappears from May’s eyes, replaced by something more somber. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter manages to squeeze out past the lump in his throat. “Yeah, just...those were some really good days.” 

_Simple days. Happy days. Days when I wasn’t so messed-up in the head. _

“They were, weren’t they,” says May. She leans forward. Takes his hand. “Hey. How about when you get out of here, we go back there? Me and you. We can make a day of it. Watch the penguins for hours if you like.” 

_In a year’s time, _Peter thinks, glum. _A whole year. And that’s if nothing goes wrong. _

He says, “Sure, May. That sounds nice.”

* * *

  
That conversation goes around a lot in his head, almost as much as the one he had with Tony — the two exchanges on a loop through his brain, each as compelling as the other. Peter feels like the rope in a game of tug and war, pulled in two different directions by the two most important people in his life. Which of them is right? 

His heart says forget what you see, what you feel, what your senses are telling you. Trust yourself, what do you _know? _It sounds a lot like Tony: _You’re the smartest kid I know. You know your own head. You know when something’s not right, and this is not right. You are not crazy. _

His head, on the other hand, sounds suspiciously like Doctor Lake: _Occam’s Razor. What do you believe, and what is the most logical explanation? _

Well, Peter knows what he wants to believe. It’s what he’s wanted to be true since the day he awoke here, the longing for it unwavering even in his growing self-doubt and begrudging acceptance of the history being spun to him in every waking moment: he wants this all to be a fallacy. Even though the guilt he feels about that — about dismissing the friends he’s made here, the orderlies, _May _as fiction — is crushing, the memories of being Spider-man, the thought of being more than _this _lift his spirits more than anything here ever could. 

Those memories...that life is a shining pillar of light in the bleakness of this one, just as vivid and real as the carpet beneath his feet and the drugs slogging through his veins. He can feel the wind rushing past his ears as he swings, the spider-gifted strength of his limbs as he leaps, catches, _fights. _He can feel the tingle of anticipation as he stands on a precipice, preparing to leap, that suspended moment of freefall where everything hangs in the balance, trusting himself and his webs to catch him.

He can picture it all so clearly. But of course, that doesn’t mean that it was real. If wishful thinking could change the world, Peter knows all too well it would be a very different place.

Thus comes the other side of the coin: what is the most logical explanation? 

He’s had time to think on that one, too.

Days of intense scrutiny of life and the people here at Newhaven have yielded nothing to support Tony’s claims, and though Peter has seen more than enough movies, ended up down more than enough Reddit rabbit holes in his time to come up with a veritable mountain of theories, the simple fact of the matter is that that’s all they are, _theories, _and not one of them make as much sense as the explanation that Peter, in an institution and with a history of mental illness that manifests itself in delusions and hallucinations, is simply seeing things.

It hasn’t escaped his notice that Tony is telling him exactly what he wants to hear, exactly the kind of things Peter himself had insisted upon being true as far back as his memories go here. It’s the external confirmation he was looking for when he’d tried to call Happy, when he’d first spoken to May — someone he knows and trusts to tell him he doesn’t belong here. Is it possible that lacking that, Peter’s mind had created its own external confirmation? Maybe. But why now? And why so convoluted?

If Tony would just reappear, if Peter could talk to him again, ask him more questions, maybe it would clear things up, but there are no longer any phantom voices or apparitions following Peter through his days, and the spot in front of the wall at the foot of his bed remains stubbornly vacant night after night. 

Peter is on the cusp of coming to terms with the idea that Tony was simply a manifestation of his overly conscious desire to have his life be anything but this, a wishful hallucination and nothing more, and then one night he looks up and there he is.

“You’re back,” Peter gasps, scrambling to sit up in bed. He reaches for his glasses on the nightstand, unblinking as he pushes them up the bridge of his nose. Tony is standing in front of him, hands in his pockets.

The rush of relief is instantaneous and overwhelming, so much so that Peter forgets for a moment that he hasn’t yet made up his mind as to whether he can trust his own eyes and ears here. That he is supposed to be wary, still.

Tony cocks his head. “Of course. You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you?”

Peter hesitates. He doesn’t know how to answer that. Is that what he’d thought? He’d certainly hoped not but as the days passed…

“I...I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if you...if I…I mean, it’s been almost a week.” 

“It has?” Tony looks around the room with a frown, as if evidence of time passed might be written on the walls. “Guess we still need to work on timing, then. I’m sorry kid, it wasn’t supposed to be that long. None of this was supposed to take this long.” 

“None of what?”

“Getting you out. You being in here. All of it. Shit, none of this should have happened at all.”

Tentative hope flickers in Peter’s chest. “You’re getting me out? Now?” He’s spent so long doubting his senses, his sanity, trying to work out whether or not Tony was real, that he’d never even considered that if the man were to reappear, it might be his instant salvation. The thought that he might have already taken the last round of medication, already had the last session with Doctor Lake quickens his pulse. 

But Tony’s wince slows it again. 

“Not quite. I’m working on it, kid, but it’s not that simple.”

_Right. _Peter slumps. _Of course not. _

He has no right to feel so disappointed over something he never expected anyway, and yet the disappointment rises up like a tidal wave. 

“Soon, Pete,” Tony tells him, but Peter can’t help but think of the time that’s passed since Tony was last here. Of all the time that could still pass between now and _soon, _an endless stream of _soons _with no payoff. No escape. A snake chasing its own tail.

“_ When? _” he breathes. 

“I don’t know, kid.”

Or maybe just Peter, chasing his own fantasy.

He closes his eyes. Takes a breath. “Are you even really here?” he asks.

“Thought we established the answer to that was a complicated yes _and _no.” Tony says with a levity that cracks Peter’s heart right down the middle. Perhaps Tony senses this, though, because he adds, softer, “I’m here, kid.”

“In my head but not a product of it, right?” Peter lets loose a bitter laugh, though nothing about this is funny. “I’m still not convinced you’re real. I want you to be, but...”

A nod. “I figured you’d have your doubts. Honestly, I think I’d be kind of disappointed if you didn’t. We both know you’re smarter than that.”

An ember glows in Peter’s chest at the praise, but it quickly gutters. “I don’t feel smart. I feel…” _Confused _. “I don’t know what to feel. I mean, I’m in a psych ward because of delusions and hallucinations, Mr Stark, and I’m the only person who can see you. I feel like that doesn’t exactly bode well for what’s happening here, you know?”

Tony shakes his head. “You’re not in a psych ward, kid.”

“Then what is it? You said I’m in the medbay, so what does that make this? Some kind of _It’s a Wonderful Life _coma dream? ‘cause I gotta tell you, Mr Stark, it is _not _a wonderful life. It’s not a wonderful life at all. It sucks. It’s a sucky life.”

Tony smiles thinly. “Always with the pop culture references, huh, kid?”

Peter shrugs. “It was that or the Matrix, what with all the pills they’ve got me taking,” he says, not missing the way Tony’s eyes shutter at that. 

“I can’t tell you what it is, Pete.”

“Right. Because something’s blocking you,” Peter says.

“Right. Trust me when I say we can’t afford to set that off again. I doubt you’re gung ho for a repeat performance either.”

The memory of endless and edgeless agony shooting through his skull, blood bursting from his nose, has Peter pressing his lips together. That pain, at the very least, had been real. It’s one of the things that has kept him from outrightly dismissing all of this. “No,” he says quickly.

“Then you’re going to have to figure this one out on your own for now. I know you’ve been thinking.”

“There’s nothing to do in here _but _think.”

“And what do you think?”

Peter studies a loose thread on his blanket. Tugs at it slightly, watching the fabric around it bunch. “I think a lot of things. I think…I think I want what you’re saying to be true. I want this not to be my life. I don’t want to have imagined Spider-man, or knowing you, and I definitely don’t want to have killed anyone.” Peter blows out a breath. “But I also think it’s been months since I woke up here, and it’s only when I finally start to feel like I’m accepting it, like maybe I _could _accept it, that you show up and tell me everything I’ve wanted to hear the whole time. Everything I’ve worked so hard to let go of. And I think… I think there’s so much about it that doesn’t make sense.”

Tony has been listening patiently. Now he says, “Like?”

“Like, why is time moving differently here and where you are? Like, why can’t I remember how I got here? Like, if I’m Spider-man, why aren’t my powers working?”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Would you believe any of this if they were?”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“You already know I can’t give you one, kid. Didn’t work out so well last time I tried.”

Peter sighs. “I _think _it’s convenient that you can’t explain,” he says. “I think there’s no way of proving any of this and I _think _… I think the most logical explanation is probably the right one.”

Peter pulls at the thread again. It snaps off in his hand. 

“I think if I wasn’t an idiot, I would accept this is probably just in my head and go and tell Doctor Lake my meds have stopped working.”

“Who?” 

There’s an edge to Tony’s voice. A sharpness. It makes Peter look up just as sharply. Tony is looking at him, eyes laser sharp in their intensity. 

“Doctor Lake,” Peter repeats, carefully. “He's the head doctor here. My doctor, I guess.”

Tony just frowns. “Lake?” he says, clearly unfamiliar with the name. 

Then like the shadow of a descending cloud, his face changes, first to realisation, and then to anger. 

“Oh that— that’s just— _Lake. _He thinks he’s so damn clever. Let me ask you, Pete: this guy, he got a beard, bug eyes and a penchant for maniacal smiles?”

Before Peter can answer, Tony scoffs. His hand cuts through the air, agitated. “Never mind. Listen to me. If you listen to one thing I say, make it this: he’s not your friend.”

“No,” Peter agrees, hesitantly, “he’s a doctor.”

A bitter breath of a laugh. “A doctor? Right. He’s so far from _do no harm _it’s a joke. He’s not trying to help you, kid. You can’t trust him.” 

Faintly, in the back of Peter’s mind, a whisper: _Don’t. _

He’d lied to Lake, the morning after the cafeteria incident. Lied about seeing Tony. He still doesn’t know why.

“But I can trust you, is that right?”

“Yes,” Tony says, firmly. “_Yes. _Look, what’s gonna do it for you, kid? You need proof, well let’s be practical. What’s gonna convince you? I’m a bit limited in terms of explanations right now what with the ticking time bomb in your noggin and all, so we’re gonna have to get creative.”

“You…want me to tell you how to convince me?”

“I want you to trust me. I want you to believe what I’m saying, and stop playing right into B—” Tony cuts himself off, casting a wary glance Peter’s way. He lets out a long exhale. “—into...this.”

A pause stretches out between them. 

“Okay,” Peter says after a moment. “Well, if...if you’re real...then how about you tell me something only I would know. What was my—” 

His voice trails off; Tony is shaking his head. 

“What?” 

“Come on, kid, think about it for a sec. If I was all in your head, I’d already know everything you know, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t prove a thing.” 

Peter opens his mouth to retort, but then he thinks about it for a second, and realises that actually, Tony’s right. Then he thinks about the conversation he’d had with May the day before and starts to feel ill. His jaw clicks closed, lips pressing together tightly.

“For the record, though, the first time we met you told me you couldn’t go to Germany because you had homework, I know about the pay-per-view at the hotel, and I know you’re a closet Taylor Swift fan because of the time you left FRIDAY linked up to your Spotify.”

In a thin voice, Peter says, “That’s just good taste.” 

Tony’s eyes search his face. “You already tried this, didn’t you?” 

Skin feeling clammy, the world feeling like it’s tilting on its side, Peter nods.

“Who? May?”

Again, Peter nods. 

“Sorry, kid.”

Peter swallows thickly. “It’s...it’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, just... how do we do this?”

“Okay, well, something you know isn’t going to cut it, so how about something you _don’t? _Something there’d be no way I could know if you made me up — which, you know, you didn’t. Capital city of Croatia, for example?”

Peter blinks. “Zagreb.”

Tony’s eyebrows rise, surprise colouring his features a moment before comprehension does. “Right,” he says, shaking his head. “Decathlon. This is going to be harder than I thought. Uh, what about Ghana?”

“Accra.”

Tony looks sideways at him. “Jeez, kid, you’re a bundle of laughs, aren’t you? Kugelmugel — know that one?”

“That’s not a real place.”

“Sure it is. Do you know, or not?”

Still doubtful, Peter shakes his head.

“Great. It’s Kugelmugel. Same as the country,” Tony tells him. “Well, micronation. Well, just a house really. Weird, round thing. I’ll take you some time, you’ll love Vienna.” He pauses. Looks at Peter. “Kugelmugel. Okay?”

“Okay,” Peter says, brows pinching together. “But… how am I supposed to check? In case you haven’t noticed I don’t exactly have access to Google right now.”

Tony lets out a harsh breath, not quite a laugh. “Ask _Doctor Lake_,” he says, disdain evident in every syllable. “I’m sure he’ll love having the opportunity to feel like he’s the smartest guy in the room.”

Peter’s frown deepens at that. Something niggles in the back of his mind. Something...

_Something… _

But before he can figure it out, the jingle of keys in the lock cuts through his thoughts. Peter jolts so hard he almost jumps off the bed, only managing to recover at the last second.

"Peter?" Julie says, sticking her head into the room. She frowns a little, seeing him sitting up in the dark. Seeing him in his glasses. "It’s two A.M. Is everything all right?"

"Yeah,” Peter says, voice cracking. He clears his throat. “Yeah, I was just—" He cuts a quick look to the wall. Tony, of course, is not there. “—reading,” he finishes, grabbing his book from the side table.

Julie eyes the book sceptically, then her gaze trails over to the wall, to the same spot Peter’s had. She never misses anything. 

"Honey, did you… did you take your meds tonight?"

Peter’s hands tighten around his ratty copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. “Yes," he says quickly. "I did, I promise. Ask Martinez. He’ll tell you."

A sigh. A tight smile. “I’m sorry, honey, you know I have to check,” Julie says, at least managing to look genuinely apologetic about it. 

Peter forces a smile of his own onto his face, feeling more like he’s baring his teeth. His heart patters against his ribs. “I know, it’s okay.”

“You’re sure everything is all right here?”

_Do you even care? Are you even real? _

“Yeah,” Peter says. “I’m good.”

“Okay, well try and get some sleep, then, all right? Don’t think I haven’t noticed those bags under your eyes, mister. That book can’t be that good.”

Peter nods, pulling his glasses off and placing them back on the nightstand. He settles down under the covers, though sleep is the last thing on his mind. 

Satisfied he’s at least making the attempt at it, Julie steps out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind her. Just before it clicks shut, Peter calls her name.

“Julie?”

She sticks her head back into the room. “Yeah, honey.”

“Have you ever heard of Kugelmugel?”

Julie’s brows furrow at that. She lets out a little laugh. “Kugelmugel?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

She shakes her head. “That sounds made up, honey. Get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Peter breathes as she backs out of the room once more. “It does, doesn’t it.”

The click of the lock engaging on the door echoes loud in the darkness.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go! I hope you enjoyed :)
> 
> Please leave a comment to let me know what you think — they’re what keep me going!!
> 
> Love to all of you <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, it's me, risen from the dead with a new chapter, just in time for halloween. 
> 
> A billion thanks to seekrest as always for checking things over and keeping me straight, and a billion thanks to everyone who has been waiting patiently or sending love in the long wait.
> 
> Without further ado:

Naturally, the first thing Peter wants to do when he wakes up the following morning is to go straight down to Lake’s office, though even a night of tossing and turning hasn’t helped him decide for what purpose. If he had any sense it would be to come clean about everything that has been going on, but he finds himself equally driven, if not more so, by the need to ask about this nonsensical sounding place in Vienna. His doubts still linger — and with good reason — but they’ve become secondary now to his curiosity, peaked more than ever.

When the doors unlock that morning, Peter has to fight to resist the urge to instantly try and satisfy that curiosity, all too aware of appearing too keen or drawing attention to the importance of what he’s asking. Worst case scenario, that ends up with him sedated and strapped to a bed; _ worse _ worst case scenario, it tips off whoever (if anyone) is behind all of this, and where that path leads doesn’t bear thinking about.

So he forces himself to wait, brushing his teeth, getting dressed, wading through the usual morning monotony like it’s just a normal day. In reality, it feels like anything but. 

Breakfast passes in a haze of focus, and it’s probably obvious to everyone in the room that he’s distracted, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s too busy thinking about what Tony said and how he’s going to broach the subject of Kugelmugel with Doctor Lake without arousing any suspicions. It isn’t an easy task; it’s such an obscure topic that he’s certain the doctor is bound to pick up on the oddness of it no matter how Peter chooses to approach things, and if he then wants to know why Peter is asking, how will Peter explain himself? What will he tell him? 

_ The truth, _ a quiet part of his mind suggests, _ that you think you might be losing your marbles again. _Peter ignores it. He isn’t telling anyone here the truth. Not until he’s sure.

He toys with bypassing Lake and asking one of the orderlies about Kugelmugel instead. Carl is distributing meds in the cubicle this morning and Peter knows he pretty much always has his phone on him despite the rules and regulations strictly prohibiting it. A quick google search should be easy enough — one question and then Peter would know. But he’s already mentioned the place to Julie, and if he’s learned anything it’s how fast word travels between green scrubs here in Newhaven. If Carl’s already had a heads up, pushing the question now might make him suspicious enough to go to Lake before Peter has the chance to. He might never get an answer then, and that’s not something he’s willing to risk. 

No matter how frustrating it might be to wait, for the moment, that’s what he has to do. He has an appointment with Doctor Lake after the first social hour. He can hang on until then, right?

Except that turns out to be easier said than done. The morning drags. Every minute that passes starts to feel like wasted time, like another minute Peter could potentially be in his real life, his better life, with his real family and friends. It puts him in a foul mood as he eats his breakfast, an even worse one during social hour as he sits at the table with Janine, Robbie, and Martinez, staring blankly at the cards he’d reluctantly accepted and half-listening to Janine talk about the new Disney movie that just got announced for the end of the year. Frustration simmers below his skin as his eyes flick to the clock on the wall. If none of this is real, then what the hell does it matter what movie is coming out when? What does any of it matter? Still, he politely nods along and takes his turns when they come round. After all, what else is he supposed to do?

After an hour spent bouncing his knee under the table and making minimal contribution to the conversation around him, social hour is over and finally, he’s free to go. He excuses himself from the table and makes a quick exit, throwing his mid-morning pills back with a grimace and a chase of water on the way out of the rec room. It’s showtime.

Planning can only account for so much in a situation like this, he realises with a building dread as he makes his way down the hall. There’s a thudding in his ears that grows louder with every step towards the office — his pulse, quickening as he gears himself up for what he’s about to do, what he’s about to potentially uncover. It might change nothing, but by the same token it could change everything. If Lake confirms that Kugelmugel is a real place, it means that Tony isn’t a figment of Peter’s imagination. By extension, it means Spider-man isn’t, either, nor the ‘fabricated’ memories of the last two years. 

It means this is all a sham.

It’s an exciting prospect, but daunting, too. After all, what does that mean for Peter, right here and now? What would change? What can he do? He’s already tried running once, and he certainly can’t run from his own head. If Tony hasn’t been able to figure out how to wake him up, get him out, how the hell is _ Peter _ supposed to, stuck here with limited resources and no powers?

He shakes his head. _ One step at a time, _ he tells himself as his next one brings him up to Lake’s door. It’s open, as it usually is when the doctor isn’t in a session with a patient. Peter turns into the doorway, his fist raised to rap on the frame—

—and draws up short. 

It isn’t Lake who’s sitting behind the desk inside. 

A thinning hairline and thick-rimmed glasses, Croft looks up from the stack of papers he’s trying to organise. When he notices Peter standing there, he fumbles, sending some of the sheets fluttering to the floor despite his ham-fisted attempt to catch them. “Oof, crap. Uh, Mr Parker. Peter. Hello. Is everything all right? What can I do for you?”

For a moment, Peter can only blink, standing stiffly in the doorway. The jarring disappointment at finding the doctor absent after all the anticipation, combined with a lingering dislike for Croft, who he still hasn’t fully forgiven for the rude introduction to Newhaven all those months ago -- nor the repeat in the cafeteria a few weeks back -- makes his tone come out clipped as he asks, “Where’s Doctor Lake?”

Croft adjusts his glasses. “Ah. Right. Yes. Well, it’s his day off today. Is there something I can help with, maybe?” 

It looks like the last thing this man wants to do is help. In fact, he looks like he’s silently praying that Peter will just leave him alone. His eyes flit and his fingers twitch, pushing the files on the desk in front of him into some semblance of an orderly pile. 

“I… no,” Peter says. He frowns. “Are you sure? About Lake, I mean. We were supposed to have a session today.”

Croft frowns down at the table, moving his papers and Lake’s clunky paperweight aside to check the diary kept there. His finger trails down the page. “Hmm. Nope, your session is tomorrow. Says right here: Wednesday morning.”

“What?” That can’t be right. Peter steps forward, shakes his head. “No. No, it was definitely today. Tuesday. It’s always Tuesdays.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Peter. The appointment is booked in for tomorrow. Wednesday. Tuesday is blank, see? No cross-outs.” Croft lifts the diary slightly so that Peter can see that the page marked _ Tuesday _ is indeed empty, his name scrawled in Lake’s recognisable handwriting under _ Wednesday, A.M, _instead.

He stares, dumbfounded. The proof is right there in front of him, the appointment is Wednesday, and apparently always has been, except… except Peter knows that’s not how it was before. He knows it. Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday — those are the days they meet. Every week, it’s always the same. Lake puts so much emphasis on routines and stability, there’s no way he would have changed it without making sure Peter was expressly aware. And Peter has no memory of it being mentioned at all.

As he stares at the messy loops of his name, at the blank page he _ knows _ wasn’t blank before, a cold sensation starts to trickle down his spine.

Something is _ wrong. _

He looks back up at Croft, who is watching him with a cautious expression, and forces his lips to twitch up in a semblance of a smile. “I… right. I guess I must have forgotten.” He swallows thickly. “I’ll just... come back tomorrow, then.” 

If anything, Croft’s gaze turns scrutinising. On the receiving end of it, Peter’s chest starts to grow tight, his breathing turning shallow. 

“You’re sure there’s nothing I can help you with?”

“No. No it’s fine,” Peter says, quickly backing out of the office and somehow managing not to stumble over his own feet in his haste and the shakiness that has crept into his limbs. 

Croft’s voice follows him as he steps through the doorway: “Eleven thirty, then, Mr Parker. Don’t be late.”

Peter barely hears him.

He makes it as far as the end of the hall and round the corner before he has to double over, palm pressed firmly to his chest. His heart beats double time against his hand as he tries to draw air into his lungs. He feels lightheaded, sweaty. He can’t breathe.

_ My inhaler, _ he thinks as he wheezes, but he knows it wouldn’t do any good. This isn’t asthma; Peter’s dealt with anxiety long enough to recognise a panic attack when he sees one. Truthfully, he’s surprised it’s taken this long. The stress has been building and building for weeks — not knowing who to trust or what to believe, it’s inevitable it would all come to a head at some point. But right now? Over a misremembered appointment of all things?

No, not a misremembered appointment, Peter corrects himself. A _ changed _ appointment. More than that, an appointment made to look like it was never changed at all. Peter knows he’s right about this. As insane as it seems, he knows he is. He’s… well... he’s almost certain. He’s… _ god, _ he’s losing his mind.

He slides down the wall, knees drawn into his chest, breaths coming in short gasps. He doesn’t know how much more of all this he can take — feeling like he doesn’t know what’s going on, feeling like he doesn’t even know himself. It’s exhausting. It’s wearing him down. He shoves his glasses up onto the top of his head, pushes the heels of his hands hard to his eyes, willing himself not to cry. He needs to calm down, get himself under control; this isn’t helping anything, least of all him. Losing it isn’t going to fix anything. 

_ C’mon, Peter, think it through, _ he tells himself, trying to focus on something other than the frantic hammering of his heart, trying to channel the adrenaline into something productive, _ what does it mean? _

He inhales evenly through his nose, shakily out through his mouth. Again. Okay. _ Okay. _ If… if he were right about this it would mean… it would mean that someone, or some _ thing, _ is messing with him. Right? That’s what it would mean. It would mean that someone or some _ thing _ was trying to stop him from asking a question that would give him clarity, trying to make him doubt himself, make him think he’s crazier than he already feels. And... isn’t that what Tony’s been telling him this whole time?

A startled laugh escapes Peter’s mouth. Humourless, really — more of a sob. It’s got to be the very definition of insane to put any stock in the words of a guy that only he can see, one who turns up at random times of the day with no rhyme or reason. But now, curled up here on the floor, Peter wonders if he might finally be starting to. 

* * *

By the time he has finally gotten his breathing under control and picked himself up off the cold tiles of the hallway, it’s almost time for lunch. A little rationality has crept back in now that he is calm once more (one changed appointment, confusing and unexpected as it may be, is obviously not enough to prove things either way; thinking so would be foolish) and with it, so too has determination. This has gone on for long enough, and Peter is over it. He’s done. He is not waiting until his appointment tomorrow to ask about Kugelmugel. One way or another, he is getting his answers today. 

Lunch is lasagne, which is actually pretty good, not that Peter tastes much of it as he distractedly shovels it into his mouth. He is not thinking about food, he is thinking about his options, about which of the orderlies is the best to bring his question to.

The shift is still Martinez, Sarah and Carl. Peter knows he can’t ask Sarah — she’s incredibly sweet and accommodating, but also incredibly new, and therefore unwavering on the rules for fear of not passing probation. If she agreed to run a search for him, which she wouldn’t, she would definitely follow it up with a cheery little note in the handover. He can’t have that. He scratches her off his mental list. 

Next is Martinez. He is probably one of the orderlies Peter gets along with best, and he’s definitely relaxed enough to keep the whole thing on the down low, but he’s also deeply caring. He’d worry. He’d want Peter to tell him why he wants to know, in case maybe he could help, and Peter won’t be able to tell him. 

That leaves Carl.

Carl is… _ fine, _ depending on the time of day you catch him and the direction the wind is blowing. He certainly wouldn’t be overly concerned about why Peter needs him to look up a random place in Austria — not for any of the same reasons Martinez would be, anyway — and he definitely isn’t a stickler for the rules, either. He’s been here far too long for that. He might pass Peter’s queries on to Lake, but so what, Peter thinks brazenly, the events of the morning making him bold, he needs to know now. He’s not wasting another second in this place if he doesn’t have to.

It’s decided.

When the others have finished up, placing their trays on the clear-away cart and filtering one-by-one out of the cafeteria, Peter lingers. He drags his feet as he carries his own tray, and once Sarah has escorted Laura out into the hall and Martinez retreats into the booth, he approaches Carl, who is now roughly wiping down the table. 

“Um...Carl?”

“Hmm,” Carl grunts, glancing up only briefly to see who he’s been interrupted by. Not a great day, then. Peter feels his palms start to sweat.

“I was, uh, wondering if you could maybe help me with something.”

Carl stops the broad swipes of the cloth across the table. He straightens, looking moderately inconvenienced by the request, but not annoyed, not yet. He might be kind of an ass, but he’s not an _ ass. _“What is it, kid?”

_ Here goes nothing. _ “I need something looking up,” Peter says. “It’s a place. Um. In Vienna.” Carl’s face remains impassive and Peter’s next words tumble out in a rush. “I know I’m not allowed to use the internet, but it’s kind of important, and it’ll be quick, I promise. I thought maybe I could borrow your phone? Or, um, I tell you and you google it for me?”

Carl continues to observe him steadily for a moment or two, then he glances over his shoulder toward the booth, where Martinez has his head down, sorting out the afternoon prescriptions. With a sigh, he turns back to Peter, shakes his head. “Sorry. Can’t help you. Got chewed out by the brass a couple days back for having my cell on shift. Gave me an official warning and everything, you believe that? I don’t know who ratted me out, but from now on, it’s staying in the locker. I need this job.”

The words are quiet, but they slam into Peter like they had been shouted. He feels the hopeful expression slide off of his face. Carl has been flouting the rules for as long as he can remember being here — longer, if what Janine has told him is anything to go by — why would someone have reported him for having his phone on shift now, just when Peter suddenly has need of it? First the appointment, now this. That feeling of _ wrong _creeps through Peter again, but it isn’t anxiety he feels this time, it’s suspicion. 

“You could just go to your locker quickly now,” he suggests, trying to keep his voice even. Maybe he’s just being paranoid. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.

Carl leans over the table to start wiping it down again. “Not going to happen.”

“It would take two minutes,” Peter presses, an edge of desperation creeping into his voice.

“Look, I’m working,” Carl says, somewhat tersely now. “In case you haven’t noticed. I can’t just duck out mid shift ‘cause you suddenly got a bee in your bonnet for geography.”

Something about the way he says it, flippant, like Peter is just being difficult, like this isn’t potentially his actual life on the line here, makes Peter’s patience — already worn thin as the membrane of an egg — rupture. “Well, what about on your break, then?” he snaps.

Carl sills. His eyes narrow, and Peter knows he has gone too far. “Why the attitude, Parker? What’s so important it’s got you on my ass about it like this?”

Peter holds Carl’s gaze for a few seconds, forcing himself to calm down. He can’t press this any farther. He’s blown his chance here, and he knows it. 

_ Or maybe, _ a voice in the back of his minds says, _ your chance was blown from the get go. Maybe you were never supposed to get to that phone. _

“Nothing,” he bites out. “Sorry.”

“That’s what I thought. Go cool off, kid.”

Stalking out of the cafeteria, Peter wants to shout back, _ Don’t call me kid. _ But he doesn’t. He holds his tongue, and like he’s told, he goes to cool off.

* * *

It occurs to him some time later as he lies on his bed staring up at the ceiling, his frustration finally having simmered into something resembling more of a dying ember than a hot coal, that aside from speaking to Lake, he still has one other option. 

It’s one he doesn’t feel good about. He manages to put off considering it too seriously until after dinner, at which point he has to admit that he is fighting a losing battle and can deal with the suspense hanging over his head no longer. The meal ends, the meds are dished out, and then once they’ve all been excused from the cafeteria, Peter heads down to the main desk. 

The shift has changed by now, night staff replacing the day, so there’s no chance of him running into Carl again, for which Peter is thankful. He’s not looking to interact with the guy for a while after what happened after lunch. Not unless he has to, anyway — he’s not confident he’d be able to rein in his temper a second time, and there’s no scenario at present where that ends well for him. Best to be avoided. 

It’s Davis who has desk duty tonight, and he looks up at Peter’s approach, lifting his chin in acknowledgement. 

“Peter, my man, what can I do for you?”

Peter used to think Davis was kind of prickly, like Carl, but he’s since come to realise the guy’s just not very talkative, keeps himself to himself. It’s that and the dry sense of humour that give him an air of being unfriendly, though Peter remembers the way he had picked him up off the bathroom floor that one time, helped him get back to bed, reassured him. Davis is an okay guy. Peter just doesn’t know how to feel about him maybe not being a real one.

“Hey, Davis,” he greets. “I wanted to call my aunt, if that’s okay?” 

Davis looks at the clock on the wall. “Now? Kind of late, isn’t it?”

“It’s important.”

Davis considers it for a moment, then shrugs. “Can’t argue with that, I guess,” he says, tapping a few keys on the computer to bring up May’s contact details. “Say, how’s your aunt doing, anyway? I haven’t seen her round here for a few weeks.” He chuckles at the affronted look Peter sends his way. “Okay, okay, I’m dialling. Here.” He hands Peter the phone and backs away with his hands raised in mock surrender to the other end of the desk, where he starts sorting through the mail tray. 

Peter presses the phone to his ear and listens to the line ring. 

Already, guilt is sitting heavy on his chest. Calling May to get her to prove she’s real feels like a betrayal: even though Tony assured him this wasn’t actually his aunt, she still looks like May, and sounds like May, and smells like May, and the thought of deceiving her—something Peter promised never to do again after the whole suit situation—feels just as bad as it always has.

He tells himself it’s necessary.

_ “Hello?” _

Peter almost jumps when the call connects, as jittery as he is feeling. His hands slip on the plastic of the phone. “May, hi,” he says, “It’s Peter.”

_ “Peter! Hey hon, how are you?” _

“I’m—”

There’s a honk and a string of curse words from the other end of the line, then, _ “Sorry, baby, I’m on the way into the city and no one on this stupid bridge knows how to drive.” _ The last part of the sentence is said extra loudly, and Peter can clearly picture May leaning out of the window as she passes the idiot who cut her off. _ “What were you saying?” _

“Um. That I’m okay,” Peter says, frowning. If May’s driving she’s not going to be able to help him right now. So much for that plan.

_ “Oh! Right! That’s good. That’s always what I want to hear. Did you just call to chat, or…?” _

“Mmm,” Peter hums. Then, “Actually, no.” 

_ “What is it?” _

Peter casts a glance toward Davis, who is still focused on his task at the other end of the desk, politely giving Peter space for his conversation. Curling his hand around the microphone, and lowering his voice, Peter turns his back to him. “May, I— I’m calling because I need to ask you something. I need a favour.”

There’s a brief moment of quiet on the other end of the line, and Peter thinks maybe he’s blown it here, too. But then May says, “_ O...kay… I mean I don’t know how much help I can be, but I’ll do the best I can. Shoot, hon. _”

Peter blinks. That easy, huh? “Okay,” he says. His blood starts to pump faster. “Okay. I know you’re driving right now but I need you to look something up for me. I need you to—“

_ “Crap. Peter, honey, I’m sorry. I’m heading into a tunnel. I might lose you.” _

Peter freezes, unease sweeping over him. _ A tunnel? _Hadn’t she just said she was on the bridge? “Um, okay,” he says. “May, I need you to look up this place called—“

_ “I didn’t hear that, hon, you went all crackly.” _

That unease grows. “Can you hear me, now?” Peter asks, grip tightening on the phone.

_ “I can hear you.” _

“Okay, I need you to—“

_ “Oh! No, I’ve...Are you still there?” _

“_ Yes _,” Peter says. “May, can you—“

_ “Hello? Peter?” _

“May, I’m—“

That’s as far as he gets before he’s cut off by a monotonous beeping that signifies the call has dropped. 

For a few seconds all he does is stare at the phone, heart pounding a staccato rhythm in his chest. 

“Bad reception?” Davis asks.

Peter furrows his brow, thinking. “...yeah.”

“That's too bad. You want to try again?”

Absently, Peter nods. He holds the phone to his ear while Davis redials for him, but instead of ringing, the call goes straight to that same, busy signal. They try a second time, to the same result.

“Bad luck,” says Davis. “Try again tomorrow, maybe?”

That snaps Peter out of his thoughts. He looks up sharply. “No!” Davis pulls a face at his reaction, and Peter exhales slowly. “No,” he repeats, calmer. “I want to call someone else.”

“Someone… else?”

“Ned. Leeds. I want to call him.”

Peter can feel his foot starting to bounce as Davis goes back to the computer, his fingers tapping at the keyboard a few moments before he shakes his head and says what Peter had, deep down, known he would. “Sorry, man. We don’t have any details for a Ned Leeds. He’s not on your authorised contacts.”

Wrong. _ Wrong wrong wrong. _ Peter scrapes the nail of his index finger down the inside of his thumb, up and down and up and down, over and over. A picture is starting to form in his head now — everything that’s happened today like jigsaw pieces slotting into place. “He’s my best friend. He should be there.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. He’s not on the system.”

“Well, who else _ is, _ then?” 

Davis hesitates. He looks uncomfortable, wincing slightly as he answers. 

“No one, Peter.”

* * *

That evening, Peter goes to bed feeling confused, frustrated, fearful, but strangely too, almost vindicated. He has no hard proof to speak of, not yet, but what he does have now is a gut feeling — a Spidey sense, he allows himself to think wryly. It tells him that there is something going on here. Something more than meets the eye. It tells him that maybe — just maybe — he was right this whole time.

The changed appointment, Carl and his sudden shifted stance on the rules, May and the dropped signal — each of these things on their own are perfectly ordinary, unremarkable and easily explained; together, and together _ today, _ especially, they become something else entirely. Together, they become coordinated. The feeling that Peter is being sabotaged somehow — prevented from asking about Vienna, prevented from getting a straight answer — seemed like one of Ned’s conspiracy theories this morning. Now, it’s a notion he can’t seem to shake. It makes him feel paranoid, but as someone once said, is it really paranoia if it’s true?

His thoughts tumble as he sits in the dark, unable and unwilling to sleep. The truth is that he doesn’t know what to think. Has Tony been telling the truth the whole time? Has he really been lying in the med bay, stuck in his own head? Or is he just seeing things the way he wants to see things? Hoping one version of events is true and shaping evidence to fit that narrative. _ Confirmation bias _— he remembers that from school. It’s led to seriously wrong conclusions in the past, and it could lead to something disastrous here if he’s not careful.

The only thing he can do, he decides, is collect more data. When Tony makes an appearance tonight, he’s going to listen to what the man has to say. Openly, this time, without suspicion or doubt. And tomorrow? 

Tomorrow, he is going to speak to Doctor Lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never abandoned, just delayed!
> 
> Please leave a comment and let me know what you think! Reading through your comments is honestly what gives me the push I need!
> 
> (Also, for my US readers: please remember to vote!)
> 
> Love always <3


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that I don't claim to be representing good psychiatric care in any way. Bad therapy ahead. Take care of yourselves.
> 
> Thanks as always to [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/pseuds/seekrest) for continuing to cheer me on with this even though it's been 84 years.

“Ah. Might have overshot this one.”

Cutting through the quiet of breakfast, the unexpected voice has Peter’s fork slipping from his fingers, clattering against his plate of eggs and toast. He looks up, casting a quick glance around the table, at Robbie and Dai, whose heads lift at the noise, at Karen, who pauses her attentions with Laura to turn her gaze his way, and at Janine, who is sitting opposite him and eyeing him curiously. Behind her, unnoticed by anybody but Peter, another set of eyes are watching, too. But Peter pointedly doesn’t acknowledge those. Not right now. Not here.

His shoulders lift slightly towards his ears under the scrutiny, warmth flooding his cheeks. “Sorry,” he says. “Slipped.” 

“Thought you were supposed to be able to stick to things,” says Dai, peeling the crusts off his toast. 

Janine clicks her tongue at him in response. “Dai, really?”

Peter just picks up his fork again and quickly shovels a new heap of egg into his mouth, trying to disguise the way his hand has started to shake—and not because of Dai. 

“Who’s the asshole?” Tony asks from where he stands behind Janine. He strides the length of the table, leaning down to peer into Dai’s face. “I don’t recognise him.”

Peter doesn’t say anything back, just focuses on the act of chewing, suddenly a much more difficult task than it’s ever been before. 

On the edge of his vision, Tony straightens. “Bad timing, huh? Right. Sorry, kid. I was aiming for last night, I suppose, but I guess we’re still trying to pin it all down. You can hear me though, yeah?”

Peter swallows. The egg slides down his throat like glue, flavourless and thick, and as it meets the writhing ball of anxiety in his stomach it threatens to shoot straight back up again. It’s one thing for Tony to come to Peter in the quiet of his room, alone, away from scrutiny, but this… this feels risky. Too close to what happened the last time Tony showed up in the cafeteria. Too close to being discovered.

He flicks his eyes in Dai’s direction. Hardly breathes as he flicks them up from there, just quickly enough to meet Tony’s — enough for it to be a clear acknowledgement. Then he drops his gaze back to the plate in front of him. 

“You've got to stop letting him get to you, you know.” It’s not Tony who says this, but Janine, leaning forward to speak quietly over the table. Peter feels his face drain so fast it leaves him lightheaded. His knuckles go white around the fork.

“What?” His eyes jump to hers, panic racing through him. Had she seen? Does she know?

“Dai,” she says. “He only says that shit because he knows it bothers you. Why, what did you think I was talking about?”

“Nothing,” he answers quickly. He feels his heart start to stutter back toward a normal rhythm. “I just didn’t hear you properly.”

It’s a lame explanation. She frowns. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He nods. Tries to smile. “Yeah, fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” He can tell she isn’t buying it by the arch of her brow — he’s not even sure _ he _would believe him, jittery as he is and with the way his voice shakes — but she doesn’t push it further. 

“What is it with you and eerily observant women, huh, kid?” Tony chimes in lightly from the other side of the table, like he isn’t to blame for the entire exchange. Peter scowls and takes a big bite of toast. _ I’m not talking to you. _“Right. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume you can’t talk,” Tony infers somewhat correctly, “got it. Just listen, then. Have you sorted the Vienna thing yet? Are we on the same page?”

Peter frowns down at his food. How is he supposed to respond to that? _ Maybe, but I’m still not a hundred percent convinced _ isn’t the easiest thing to convey without words, and it’s obvious now he can’t speak freely. Not here. Not without making everyone sitting at the table think he’s having an episode, anyway. He settles for the technical answer; slowly, like he could just be working out a sore muscle, he twists his head from side to side. _ No. _

“Okay.” In his peripheral vision, Tony starts to pace. “Okay, kid, look. I don’t want to rush you, but I’m gonna rush you. You need to get on this.”

He’s worried, that much is clear, but still, it rubs Peter the wrong way. _ I _ am _ on this, _ he thinks, irritably, _ I’ve been trying. _ What does Tony think he’s been doing in his absence, just sitting here, twiddling his thumbs and painting watercolours? All of yesterday had been nothing _ but _ trying and he’d been pushed back at every turn, which Tony would know if he’d bothered to show up at a time and place where they could actually talk about it. 

His annoyance must be evident, because Tony sighs. “Pete, I’m— _ fuck, _ I’m sorry, I’m not trying to get on your case, it’s just things are… well, they’re not good out here. We don’t have time to waste, all right? _ You _don’t have time to waste.”

Frustration turns to cold stone in Peter’s chest. What the hell does that mean? Tony makes it sound as if he’s… As if he’s_ ... _

No. He pushes that thought out of his mind. He has too much to deal with right now without adding that to the pile. Whatever may or may not be going on where Tony is, it will have to wait. Peter can only focus on what he knows he can do something about. In here. Starting with getting his thoughts straight, getting to the bottom of the conflicting memories, finding the truth. 

Taking a steadying breath, he nods to let Tony know he understands. He clears his throat and turns to face the other end of the table. “Hey, Karen. Lake’s back in today, right?”

“Today?” Tony echoes, catching his meaning. At the same time, Karen looks up from where she is cutting the toast on Laura’s plate into squares and says, “Sure is, sweetheart. You’ve got an appointment straight after morning social, don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” says Peter, flicking his gaze up to give Tony a meaningful look. But Tony is no longer looking at him. He’s looking at Karen, his brow furrowed. Peter watches out of the corner of his eye as he leans in to look at her name badge. 

“Wait, Karen?” he says. “Karen like your A.I?” 

Peter doesn’t risk another nod this time, just drops his gaze, pushing the remains of his rapidly-cooling eggs around his plate with the tines of his fork. Yes, Karen like his A.I. It’s been a bone of contention he’s had with this place since the beginning, that the caregiver he feels closest to would have the same name as the one he’d given to the voice in his suit, a caregiver of sorts in her own right. The familiar name and kind face felt like a trick at the start, some echo of his life put here to earn his trust. But when the weeks had passed with no indication of malintent he’d started to wonder if maybe it was his own mind pulling the trick instead. Delusions are often grounded in reality, Lake had told him, after all. Maybe this Karen had somehow inspired his. 

“This is how you picture her, huh? Interesting. Thought she’d be blonde.”

Peter’s hand stills. 

_ Or maybe not. _

He lifts his head — probably too sharply — a question he can’t ask pulling his face into a frown. How _ he _pictures her? But it’s too late. Behind Karen is simply empty space. Tony is already gone. She is alone at the end of the table, carefully coaxing Laura into eating some more of her breakfast, the same as every other day. 

Perhaps sensing his eyes on her, she turns her head, giving him a small smile. Peter realises he’s staring at her, stone-faced, and forces his lips up quickly in reciprocation before dropping his gaze back down to his food. When a few moments have passed, he looks up again. Inconspicuously this time.

He doesn’t think he’s ever really given any conscious thought to what Karen — _ his _ Karen — might look like if she were a real person, but he definitely is now. Head tipped downward, peering through his lashes, he takes in the woman sitting at the other end of the table. Her hair is dark like May’s, her eyes bright with kindness and wit. Her hands, he remembers from the way she’d held his broken one as he cried, are soft and warm, her presence reassuring, familiar. There’s a quiet sturdiness about her that’s diminished none by her slight stature. 

If he were to give his Karen a human form, he realises with a queasy sensation in his stomach, this would be it. This _ is _ it.

It’s an uneasy revelation to have. It’s more uneasy to think on what it might mean. 

* * *

Breakfast ends in time. So too does social hour, and before he realises it, Peter finds himself sitting in that same old squeaky leather armchair, across from the watchful eyes of Doctor Lake. 

Yesterday he thought he would march down to this appointment and demand Lake answer his questions. He thought he would look the man in the eyes and be able to tell somehow, what the truth was. But today all he finds himself thinking is, _ This is stupid, what the hell am I doing? _

Whatever determination he felt, whatever drive was propelling him the day before seems to have dissipated now that the two of them are finally face to face, and any that might have lingered is quick to follow suit when Lake opens the session with an earnest apology for failing to let Peter know about the change in routine. _ A last-minute engagement, _ he explains. _ I thought we had discussed it, but I must have been mistaken. _ It throws Peter off in its sincerity. It’s logical and understandable — a mistake — and it makes him wonder if maybe he’s been erratic, irrational over the past day and a half, making mountains out of molehills, seeing obstacles where there are none (and perhaps superhero billionaires, too). He suddenly feels like maybe he should come clean. 

But he stops himself.

Instead, the two of them talk over the usual topics: Peter’s meds, Peter’s family, Peter’s relationships here in the facility. Lake prods around the subject of Spider-man and what happened with the ferry; Peter evades. 

He grows more and more nervous and frustrated in turn the longer the session goes on without him asking what he wants — no, _ needs — _to ask. Every time he comes close, his throat seizes up, heart stuttering, and he isn’t sure if it’s because he’s afraid of his hopes being confirmed, or rather of having them dashed. 

_ Just ask him, _ he thinks, admonishing his cowardice. _ That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Then you’ll know for sure. _

He needs to know for sure.

“Doctor Lake, can I ask you a question?” In a moment of conversational lull, he blurts it out. Makes himself, before he can change his mind again.

Lake pauses in his writing. He looks up, a small lift to the corner of his mouth as his eyebrow raises. “Does that count as the question?” Peter doesn’t return the grin and he sets his pen down, rests his interlocked fingers atop his clipboard. “Of course, Peter, that’s what I’m here for. What is it that’s bothering you?”

“I…um…um...” _ Say it. _ But he can’t. He can’t do it. _ “ _I was wondering what made you want to become a doctor,” he sidesteps.

A faintly bemused expression crosses Lake’s face. His teeth flash. “As flattered as I am by the interest, we’re here to talk about you, Peter, not me.”

“I know,” Peter says. “I know that. But I’m just… I’m kind of sick of talking about me, and I realised that...well, we’ve been talking for like, ages, and I don’t really know anything about you.”

It’s far from the first time he’s considered such a thing, but after the events of the last day or so it’s begun to weigh more heavily on his mind. _ You can’t trust him, _ Tony had said, and though Peter’s response at the time had been prickly — combative, even — he’s realised since that after May’s first visit, after he decided to accept this world, to try to get better, trust Lake is exactly what he’s started to do. As the weeks passed, he had started to take more stock in what the doctor was saying, had begun to believe him when he said that all the uncomfortable questions and enforced medication were only for his own good. He had let go of the wariness and suspicion. He had begun to confide in the man. He had started to think that Lake was a good guy, after all.

Now he wonders if maybe all of that was a mistake.

He looks at the doctor, who is looking calmly back at him. There is no hint of the ‘bug eyes’ or ‘maniacal smile’ Tony had mentioned, just the usual neutral expression Lake always seems to wear. Patient. Kind, even. But looks can be deceiving, and Peter has had enough of being deceived, whether by his own senses or the man sitting across from him. 

“You don’t know much about me because I haven't told you much about me,” Lake explains gently. “There’s a reason for that, Peter. I’m very much of the opinion that psychiatrists should be a sort of blank slate for their patients — someone to be able to express your innermost thoughts and feelings to without any contamination or influence. I’ve always found it’s much easier to talk to someone you don’t know, don’t you think? Sometimes who can be a sponge, for lack of a better term. It’s why I prefer to maintain a professional distance from my patients. You understand.”

That makes sense, Peter guesses, but it also feels distinctly like a dodge. Like something someone might say if they were trying to hide something. 

“Hmm. Very well,” Lake concedes with a light laugh, seeing Peter’s frown. “If you insist. I became a Doctor to help people, as I imagine would be the answer of most doctors. I have always had a great interest in the mind and how it works — or rather, why it might stop working in the way it should. Which is why I specifically enjoy the challenge of helping people such as yourself find their way back to what’s real. Giving them something healthy to believe in again.”

Peter feels himself relax a little. “That’s... a good reason, I suppose.”

“I’d like to think so.”

“And you must hear a lot of weird things, right? I mean, doing what you do.”

Lake smiles gently. “Weird isn’t the term I would use, but yes, my chosen field does lend itself to some interesting conversations. One thing I never am here is bored.”

“Right,” Peter says. “Right.”

There’s no ticking clock in the office, but the fan in Lake’s computer whirs loudly in the silence that descends between them. Lake is giving him the floor, waiting. Maybe he can tell Peter is itching to ask something else, maybe it’s just some standard psychiatry tactic. Peter doesn’t know. He swallows and hears his throat click. “Um. Doctor Lake?”

“Yes, Peter?”

He brushes his clammy palms off on the fabric of his sweatpants. “Can I ask you another question? It’s going to sound a little weird. Sorry,” he corrects, remembering, “not _ weird. _Just a little — well, a lot, actually — uh, unusual?”

Lake gives a light laugh. “Well, we’ve already established that this profession lends itself to unusual questions. Shoot.”

“Yeah, okay,” Peter says on a rushed breath. _ This is stupid. So stupid. _“I was wondering if you’d ever heard of a place called Kugelmugel.”

A furrow of Lake’s brows. A pause. “Kugelmugel? Where is that?”

“It’s…uh, Vienna, I think?” Peter says, like it isn’t all he’s thought about for the past seventy-two hours. 

“Vienna, you say?” Lake taps his pen against his clipboard, _ clack clack clack. _“Hmm. I have to say I’m not familiar with that one. Can I ask why it is that you want to know?”

Peter had anticipated this question. The lie, well rehearsed, but uncomfortable as they always are, falls from his tongue as smoothly as it ever could. “I had a memory. Well, I think it was a memory, and I just kind of wanted to be sure, you know, with everything that’s going on with my, um, illness and everything.”

“You had a memory about a place in Vienna?” Lake asks. His tone is measured, but his eyes are alert. Peter feels the moment like the edge of a blade, sharp and precarious. If Tony’s right, if Lake can’t be trusted, then this is a risk. It’s the moment everything hangs on.

“I… think so?”

“Have you ever been to Vienna, Peter?”

“Uh, no. I haven’t.”

“Then do you mind telling me what this memory was about?”

Peter has prepared for this question, too, though the lie does not come out as smoothly as his last. He feels his voice start to shake and only hopes Lake doesn’t notice it. “I was talking to Ned. Before I was here. He stayed over one night we watched movies and played games and he told me about it. He said he went with his family one summer, but… well, when we had the conversation I remember I was sitting on the ceiling. And the name sounded kind of fake, so…”

“So you want to know whether this place is real or not,” Lake clarifies, “and thereby determine if the entire memory is fabricated, also, or just partially corrupted?” 

“Yeah.” Peter nods. “Yeah that’s it. I’m just, uh...trying to figure things out. Get better, you know? Sometimes it’s hard to pick out what’s real and what’s not.”

“And it’s this particular memory you’ve focused on because...”

Peter’s neck prickles. “Because Ned is my best friend. It was a good night, and I want to know it really happened.”

“I see,” Lake says with a nod. For a moment, Peter thinks he might have succeeded here. Then the doctor sighs. “The thing is, I’m not sure you’re telling me the truth. I had an interesting conversation with Carl this morning, you see. He seems to think you were rather agitated yesterday, demanding that he search the very same subject for you. This… Kugelmugel. He remembered because it seemed like an odd topic, and you were very insistent.”

Peter goes cold. “I wasn’t…” he starts. Swallows. “That was a misunderstanding.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.” 

“And the late evening phone call to your aunt?” Lake goes on. “I understand your reasoning that Ned is important to you — you want to know which of your memories with him are affected by your condition and to what extent — but what I’m failing to understand is the urgency, the insistence. Why you made two separate enquiries yesterday, and a third with me today.”

“I...” Peter’s voice is no more than a whisper. He has nothing to say to that. Grappling for some excuse is like trying to catch smoke. His silence, though, it seems is answer enough.

“I see,” Lake says, dipping his chin. The pen is set down. Fingers steeple over knees. “Peter. I can’t make you tell me what’s going on — that’s for you to do when you feel ready — but… obsessive focus on strange things, agitation and irritability.” He shakes his head. “I would be neglecting my duties as your doctor if I failed to recognise the signs of an impending relapse and act accordingly.”

Peter’s eyes widen, and he finds his voice. “No!” he says. “I’m not—”

But Lake holds up a hand. “It seems like there might have been some kind of trigger that’s caused another setback, and until we know what exactly that was, I hope you’ll understand that some precautions will have to be taken. I think it’s best that for now we focus on routine and stability, which means we’ll be putting a hold on your phone time once more, to start.”

Peter’s stomach drops straight into the stupid slippers they’re all made to wear here. He forgets all about the possibility of this place being a fabrication, forgets all about the reason he came here today or what he was trying to do. All he can think about are those horrible first few weeks where May didn’t come to visit and he wasn’t able to call anyone. How alone he’d felt. How isolated. 

“What? No!”

“I’m sorry Peter,” Lake says, “you’ve given me no choice. I believe it’s imperative for your wellbeing right now that we limit your external influence, until we can get to the bottom of this. Your aunt will still be able to contact you, of course, but in a safe, controlled environment, restricted to visiting days where we can monitor your interactions.”

“I— You can’t do that,” Peter says. “I haven’t— I didn’t do anything _ wrong _.” Nothing that Lake should know of, at least.

“Peter, it’s not a punishment, it’s to help you. That’s all I’m trying to do, here. That’s all any of us want to do.”

_ Help you. _ There’s that familiar hated phrase again. _ Bullshit, _ Peter thinks to it this time. They don’t want to help him. How could they, by doing this? He can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips where they grip the arms of the chair, white knuckled. “Doctor Lake, _ please _.”

“I’m sorry, Peter, my decision is final.”

“But—“

“Peter.” The sympathetic tone is gone now, as is the matching expression. Any further protest dries up at once at the flash of darkness that crosses Lake’s face instead, sharp enough to snap Peter’s jaw shut. He’s struck by a flicker of maddening recognition, but _ why _, he still can’t figure out. 

He hangs his head, exhaling hard. His fingers press into his temples. He’s getting a headache. 

“Look,” Lake prods, voice low. And when Peter lifts his eyes once more, he finds no trace of the harshness that he’d seen there mere moments earlier. “This is hard for you, I understand. But you’re doing so well. Just look at how far you’ve come in the short months since your set back, hmm?” He ducks his head. “Can you trust that what we’re doing here is working?”

Peter is tired. He’s so very tired. And sick, too, of the back and forth of his own conviction. Still, as he looks into Lake’s eyes, so full of professional concern, one thought springs forward, surprising him with its intensity: _ You're a liar _. He doesn’t know how exactly, or why, nor to what extent, but he is sure of it in a way he hasn’t felt sure of much else in a very long time. Looking into those eyes, seeing beneath the surface, he knows. Lake is hiding something.

He is also waiting for an answer. 

Numbly, thoughts now elsewhere, Peter nods. He receives a nod of satisfaction in return. 

“Excellent,” Lake says, and proceeds to launch into a revision of his treatment plan.

It isn’t until later, much later, when Peter is lying in bed, following Charlotte’s path as she circles around the light fixture, that he realises: Lake hadn’t answered the question. In fact, he hadn’t even refused to answer it — merely sidestepped it, redirected the conversation until something else gripped Peter’s attention. It’s like May, yesterday, like Lake suddenly being absent, Carl suddenly caring about the rules. Misdirection. How long has it been going on for, Peter wonders. How much has he not seen?

The nail on his right thumb is bitten down to the quick by the time there is the telltale shimmer of movement in the corner of his room that night, signifying Tony’s arrival.

“Hey, kid,” he says, stepping toward Peter, who is sitting up against the headboard, knees pulled in close to his chest and eyes staring off somewhere into the distance as has been for some time now.

“Hey,” Peter greets back, not even looking at him.

“Look, about earlier. I didn’t mean to put the screws in. I’m just worried. I’m—“ A pause. “Hey. You’re not looking so hot. Everything okay? I mean, no, because you’re here, but...”

Peter laughs at that, a harsh, sharp sound. “No,” he says. Rubs a hand over his face. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Tony says cautiously. “What happened? Did you get your answer?” 

Slowly, Peter shakes his head. “No. No, I didn’t. But…”

He looks at Tony then, his brow deeply furrowed. Tony is looking back at him, eyes pinched with tension, with concern — all of it so indisputably genuine. Something settles in Peter’s chest at the sight. Something slots into place. Compared to this, how could he ever have thought Lake was sincere? How could he ever have thought he had his best interest at heart? Above all, how could he ever have been so stupid?

He breathes out, his exhale shaky, like his first new steps towards the truth. 

“But I think I might believe you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the continued interest and comments -- they really do motivate me when I get a bit stuck!! <3


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